There is a newer version of this article available at https://artshacker.com/how-to-temporarily-block-a-page-from-google-search-results/
Regardless the reason why you need to temporarily block a page from search results, there’s a handy tool inside Google Search Console made for that exact task.
Make sure You’re logged into your Search Console account before starting, then head to the Remove URLs tool admin panel at “Google Index > Remove URLs.”
Select the “Temporarily hide” button. In the popup, enter the URL’s relative path; that would be everything after the domain extension (.com, .org, etc.). For example, the relative path for https://artshacker.com/checklist-for-getting-noticed/ would be /checklist-for-getting-noticed/.
Select the “Continue” button.
When the page reloads, make sure “Temporarily hide page from search results and remove from cache” is selected as the “Request type” then select the “Submit Request” button.
According to Google, it can take up to 24 hours to process the quest and there are no guarantees the request will be accepted. You can visit the same admin panel for a status update and if it was denied, you should see a “learn more” link next to the notice.
Tips
- The relative paths are case sensitive, i.e.
/checklist-for-getting-noticed/is not the same as/Checklist-For-Getting-Noticed/. - Don’t include anchor paths; i.e. anything with a # character in the URL.
- If the URL has a page extension, such as .html, you’ll need to include it in the relative path.
- If your request was accepted, the block will last for approximately 90 days. Submitting successive requests for the same URL is not recommended.
