Does Muse completely remove pages when deleted?

[wi1dtree]

I’ll give some points/context before explaining

- We run a movie/event theatre which has hundreds of events/movies screening each year which means a TON of pages get created and deleted

- The website is not hosted on Business Catalyst

Recently I discovered that Google was indexing pages of my website from years ago which I thought I had been deleted.

I only noticed this when searching keywords related to the theatre for SEO.

The page in question (https://www.avocabeachpicturetheatre.com.au/nick-cave?devicelock=desktop) was an event which screened late last year which means the page within muse would have been deleted last year. Between then and now I’ve deleted everything off the server twice (and reuploaded the website) also I uploaded the entire website once each week to make sure everything goes up

For some reason, this page seems to be a ghost and still appears in searches and I can’t for the life of me find out how to get rid of it (among others)

My questions are

1. Is this Google, if yes how can I fix it

2. Does Muse actually delete a page or does it just cut the link between the program and the server leaving a .html version of the page on the server

I really hope this makes sense, I’ve contacted support a number of times without getting help

[Ussnorway · Accepted solution]

Muse sends a list to the host server that says "this is everything needed to make the site" and the host server looks at that list then; uploads, stores or removes files... larger sites | files have a cms that will store extra copies so if two or more people around the world want to see the site (at the same time) they don't need to wait for the images. how long the host server or cms keep a copy of these images is up to them and in most senarios eg, facebook they just keep it forever

[wi1dtree]

Hey thanks for your reply

When you refer to a host server are you talking about the server which hosts the website (Usually something like BC, Bluehost etc) or a Google search server which holds a list of cached website addresses?

If it's the first option I've got back-end access to the server which hosts the website and on a number of occasions as mentioned deleted every single thing off the server before re-uploading the entire website so there shouldn't be anything sitting there as a copy.

If it's the latter I could, in theory, add something like <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> in the .htaccess for the page, however doing this for each page deleted in Muse seems like a lot of time wasted when Muse should just be deleting the page in the first place?

Cheers,

Dale

[Ussnorway]

a host server is the main one that controls the site so Adobe BC, GoDady and Bluehost (a wordpress) are all host servers... Google does cache sites but they should only appear to the public if the main host server i.e, Bluehost is offline when the search is sent out.

wi1dtree  wrote

If it's the first option I've got back-end access to the server which hosts the website and on a number of occasions as mentioned deleted every single thing off the server before re-uploading the entire website so there shouldn't be anything sitting there as a copy.

I would assume you have admin rights (not a back door) and the host server only shows you the cache but you didn't tell us your host server so I can't be sure.

wi1dtree  wrote

If it's the latter I could, in theory, add something like <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> in the .htaccess for the page, however doing this for each page deleted in Muse seems like a lot of time wasted when Muse should just be deleting the page in the first place?

Fyi Google does NOT obey "noindex" commands despite what it tells you in their help files... does not matter in this case anyway but just as a heads up

[bruce_code_ADS]

Hi Dale,

Firstly, using the Google Remove outdated content tool might help.

Secondly, although it is a little labour intensive, it is a pretty good practice - especially for such a highly trafficked and frequently updated site such as yours - to use either 301 or 302 redirects for removed pages. These go into your .htaccess. I'm not 100% positive that Google will remove the pages from their index this way, but it is one of the ideas of 301/302 redirects. At least it would mean that if someone sees a result in Google and thinks that they can go and see Nick Cave, when they click the link in Google and go to your site, they'll be sent to the redirected page.

I usually add a redirect to the home page, but in your case it might be a good idea to add a new page stating that the link is outdated content and then they can go back to the home page from there. Much like a 404 page but kinder and with more specific detail.

Finally, I've added this here rather than replying by email so that it may help others in the future.

Regards,

Bruce