Google search finds product I removed

[The Baby Studio]

Hi

I had a customer order a product I no longer have on my website. Handy really as I still had one to sell.

I checked the desktop version of Sellerdeck and the product is not in there. I refreshed the web but if I search for the product directly in Google it still finds it.

If FTP to the site and look under httpdocs I can still see image files related to the product, is this what the google search is finding?

Can I delete the Httpdocs folder and publish to the web again to clear the problem?

Thank you

[kev67]

Hello

Yes in a nutshell is the answer and reason

Just because you hide or delete something from your site, it's still on your server and visible by search engines. I've had this a number of times and basically, if you seriously don't want the item seen ever again, then you need to delete it from your server

After the search bots do their rounds, they'll not see it and obviously it will not be visible - if that makes sense

[The Baby Studio]

Thanks Kev67

I haven't hid them, they are not in the desktop catalog at all. I also did a purge and a refresh of the website to no avail.

So I thought I could probably delete them from the folder on the server, but then thought "what else may be broken like that" so maybe delete the whole folder and publish again, just was a bit nervous about doing it.

Thanks for your help

[Buzby]

The way we get around this to knock the item out of stock, add the word DISCONTINUED to the product name and upload.

We then delete the product in Sellerdeck, and upload again.

This way if anyone does find the product, they can't do anything with it.

[The Baby Studio]

My problem was the product was not in my desktop catalog and refreshing the website still left the rogue copy up there. I didn't know exactly which files were associated with the product in the folder on the website, otherwise I would have just manually deleted them by logging in directly on the server. So I had to empty the whole folder on the server and upload the site again, that way only what I had on my PC went up.