How to hide my locked contents from Google's search?

[shenia]

I've locked most contents of my blog from public,
but still can access those articles in the locked categories from Google's search result.
How to make them totally unaccessible? even from google's archive page?
Thanks.

[tenoarman]

[john]

It is not possible for Google to access your restricted categories, Shenia. If an article appears in Google, that would be because you posted it to an unrestricted category, either currently or in the past.

Perhaps you posted the article to an unrestricted category and then later restricted access to that category or moved the article to a restricted category? If that is the case, that you once had an article in a public area, then it's natural that Google or any of the search engines indexed your content... Once you make something public, and it is indexed, your act of adding the content to a restricted category does not remove it from the search engines.

This is not something unique to your blog, our service, or blogs in general. It's simply a fact of life on the web. If CNN creates a page, Google and Yahoo etc. index that page, and CNN later removes that page, the act of removal does not make it disappear from the Google or Yahoo...

I see that your blog now contains only restricted categories. We've visited your site in the past, and remember from those previous visits that your blog previously had unrestricted categories and had a number of articles that were available to the public. I would expect that those are the articles you are referring to in your question, previously public articles that now are contained in a restricted category.

I am not aware of anything you can do to immediately alter Google's current search results, though it is possible that in the future Google may revisit your pages and see that they now return "The entry you are requesting has restricted viewing privileges." and update their index accordingly.

So to summarize, no it is not possible for Google to access your restricted categories and index restricted content in those categories. However, if you post an article to an unrestricted category it is quite possible, and likely, that Google will index it. Moving the article to an unrestricted category will not change the fact that Google has already indexed your article. It is not possible for anyone on the net to immediately remove an entry from a search engine results page by deleting, altering, or restricting access to the original content for that entry.

[tenoarman]

Great to know. I think the subject lines still appear so I'll make sure to label locked content in my own way.

[shenia]

Thank you, John!
Now I've got better understanding and control over the contents of my blog.
I've been very proud of BlogHarbor and has referred my friends to your service.
Really appreciative of your prompt support!!

[john]

[john]