This guide is intended to assist with the permanent removal of current and archival website content that may have been altered to meet federal guidelines. UGA websites can be hosted and maintained on a variety of platforms, so this guide will attempt to cover a broad range of solutions UGA units and departments may employ to maintain compliance.
Altering or Removing Website Content
To gain access to edit a departmental or unit website, we first suggest that you inquire internally with your local IT team about gaining access to make changes. In certain cases, the content in question may only be editable by users with direct technical knowledge around the platform. In these instances, we suggest that you provide a thorough list of the requested changes with links to the content in question to a person within the department who is authorized to make such changes.
When editing or requesting changes, be sure to pay close attention to unpublished or test pages, keywords and any other metadata that may also need altering or removal as part of this process.
If you would like to remove the entire contents of a website, it is recommended to partner with your local IT or website support team to determine the correct approach. In many cases the hosting of a website may be tied to a contract and require a request to end hosting services if all content is to be removed.
Removing Google and Other Search Engine Results Automatically
Google and other search engines employ “web crawlers” that sporadically visit websites to index their content into their search results. These search engines do not provide specific details on when this may take place, but generally this should occur once every one to two weeks. During this process, pages and content that have been removed should be removed from search results and new pages and content should be added.
If you have recently made changes to the content on your site or removed pages, web search results may still display old content or links to removed pages for several days. This content should be removed automatically as a result of the indexing process.
Removing Search Results Manually
If you would like to hasten the speed with which a search engine updates their results, in many cases you can request to have the site re-indexed or provide the search engine with a sitemap it can use to update the search results it displays for your site. This process can be technical and require direct access to the website hosting environment, so we recommend partnering with local IT or website support for assistance.
Google
Asking Google to Recrawl your URLs or Submit a Sitemap
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/ask-google-to-recrawl
Bing
URL Submission and Indexing for Bing Search
https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/url-submission-62f2860b
DuckDuckGo
This platform does not feature a way to submit a site for search indexing. It instead relies on search results from platforms like Google and Bing to update its results. DuckDuckGo particularly relies on metadata like titles, descriptions and keywords, so please take care to alter these content areas in addition to the content on your regular pages.
Removing Website URLs
NOTE: This section covers removal of a website address. This is not the same as removing the content of a website. Removing a website address may not result in the content no longer being accessible. If you would like to remove the content of a website, please see the Altering or Removing Website Content section.
These steps will differ depending on whether your website URL ends in “uga.edu” or something else.
For site addresses that end in uga.edu, please partner with your local Departmental Network Liaison (DNL) for assistance submitting a DNS request to remove the web address record. To identify your local DNL, please contact your IT help desk. When making this request, be sure to include any other impacted URLs you would like to have removed. Please remember to have the WWW record for sites removed as part of this process. For instance, if the site in question were accessible at both example.uga.edu and www.example.uga.edu, your request should ask that both URLs be removed.
For site addresses that end in something like .com, .net, or any other domain, partner with your local IT website support team to determine the correct approach. This may require accessing a third party domain registrar and requesting removal of a DNS record there.
Removing Development URLs
When requesting the removal of a uga.edu website address, it is important to note that this may not have been the only way to access data on the site in question. A development URL may have been created as part of the website setup process. This usually takes the form of an address provided to you by a third party host or developer. These development URLs may be indexed and their contents may appear in search results.
In these instances, it is recommend to inquire with your third party host or developer about the removal of any remaining development URLs.
Removing Site Archives from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine
Snapshots of your site and its contents may periodically be archived on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. You can request removal of these site archives by sending an e-mail to info@archive.org including the details outlined at https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-request-to-remove-something-from-archive-org/. Please note, as part of this process the Internet Archive may ask you to demonstrate ownership of the website and domain in some form.
Monitoring Website Content with Google Alerts
Google Alerts allow monitoring of the open web for mentions of specified terms and keywords. Setup requires a sign-in using your UGA Google account. For more information on the setup and usage of Google Alerts, please see https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/4815696?hl=en.
Policy Resources
If you have questions about this review or about how to address specific programs, activities, websites, scholarship materials, or other items, Alton Standifer (alton@uga.edu), the Vice Provost for Academic and Community Engagement and Chief of Staff to the Provost, can serve as the initial point of contact.