1. Gather the URLs you can verify

Combine a crawl, your sitemap and Search Console reports. Keep the source and reporting date for each observation. These tools cover different things, so their totals do not have to match. A site: search is not a complete or stable index inventory.

2. Group patterns, then inspect examples

Sort URLs by path and parameters to find recurring patterns. Inspect representative pages before declaring a whole group unwanted. Query parameters can produce duplicates, but can also support useful filtered pages. A parameter alone is not a deletion rule.

The transcript’s spreadsheet workflow is useful here: collect evidence and review groups systematically instead of repeatedly searching for individual URLs. The old Firefox extension and search-result settings are not required.

3. Decide what each page should do

Keep useful pages. Redirect moved content to a relevant equivalent. Use appropriate canonicalisation for duplicate versions, recognising that a canonical is a signal rather than an instruction to hide a page. For accessible content that should not appear in search, use a crawlable noindex directive. Removed content without a replacement should return an appropriate 404 or 410 response.

For discontinued products, make an explicit policy. A temporarily unavailable product may still help customers; a permanent replacement may warrant a relevant redirect. Do not automatically send every discontinued product to the homepage.

4. Fix the cause and verify processing

Search Console’s removal tool temporarily hides results. It does not permanently remove a page or fix the site. A robots.txt block can prevent Google from seeing a noindex instruction, so do not combine them blindly. See Google’s noindex documentation.

Test the actual response, links and directives after changes. Allow for recrawling and reporting delays. Recheck the examples rather than removing more pages simply because an estimated count has changed.

See the redesign checklist and when to use redirects, or discuss the work through our SEO service.