Google indexes everything it finds and sometimes it finds things that it shouldn’t. Google has a nice removal tool that temporarily removes URLs from Google and this is actually really good when you want something out rather quickly. In my experiences, it remove pages from Google Search within 24 hours. The downside to Google’s removal tool is that you have to submit URLs one at a time. If you have many pages, it’ll take some time. However, there is a work around.

There is a Chrome extension called Google Webmaster Tools Bulk URL Removal. (Homepage) It’s actually a cool little work around that will streamline removing many URLs.

Before you do any of this you need to have your site verified with Google Search Console aka Google Webmaster Tools. Without verification, you can’t do anything.

You’ll also need all the URLs you want to have removed in a plain text file, one per line. Full URLs only, no relative ones.

Once you’re ready, install the extension and then go into the Search Console for your site and to the Remove URLs page under the Google Index section.

The extension will add an option to the top of the page that will allow you to upload the file you created. Once the file is uploaded, the extension will take the first URL from the document, submit it to Google, refresh the page and then take the next URL in the document. The extension will refresh the page for each URL and you just need to sit there and wait.

The only issue I ran into was that Google got mad if too many URLs were submitted too fast. The extension has no settings so I only submitted 20 at time. Then I’d wait 30 to 60 seconds and upload 20 more. Google had no issues with this.

Once submitted, you just wait for Google to remove them. In my experience, it takes roughly 24 hours.

Now these URLs are temporarily removed from Google. Google will add them back to their index after 90 days. However, now that they’re gone, you have time to properly get the pages off your site.

Google doesn’t technically allow you to mass remove URLs because that’s not what this tool is intended for. You should be adding a robots.txt or no-index meta tags to pages you don’t want in Google. However, sometimes things happen and you need a bunch of pages removed now. The removal tool works in roughly 24 hours where as adding a robots.txt or no-index meta tag would take weeks for Google to re-index and get removed.

If you’re looking to mass remove URLs from Google, grab the Google Webmaster Tools Bulk Url Removal Chrome extension as it’ll make things go much quicker.