Member Avatar for Dani

I just did a Google search before and noticed something I have never seen before. To the right of the familiar Cached and Similar pages links is one saying Remove result.

Does anyone know what this does ... just remove the link from this particular search? Filter it out of future searches? If enough people click "Remove result" for one page, does that page get less weight in the SERPS?

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Dani AI

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Good find, — and thanks to for pointing to Google's documentation. In short: the "Remove result" link was a per-user hide/feedback control, not a global delist tool. Clicking it removes that snippet from your view for that query; it does not delete the page from Google's index or automatically lower its ranking for everyone.

Google's help text at the time described the feature as a way to hide unwanted results and provide feedback about individual hits. There was no public statement that repeated clicks by many users would itself be a reliable method to reduce a page's SERP weight. Treat "Remove result" as a personal UX control rather than an SEO weapon.

Practical steps if a page of yours is being repeatedly hidden or flagged by users:

  • Check user metrics (bounce rate, time on page, exit pages) to find relevance or UX problems.
  • Fix obvious issues: misleading titles/snippets, slow load time, intrusive popups, or thin content.
  • Use Google Search Console to inspect indexing, crawl errors, and any manual action notices.
  • If content must be removed from Google entirely, use proper server-side methods (serve a 404/410, or add a noindex meta) or Google's content removal procedures rather than relying on user hides.

Note: this description reflects how Google documented the feature then; search features and personalization have changed since 2005. For definitive wording, consult Google's current support pages if behavior needs to be confirmed today.

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Member Avatar for Rueful Rogue

Check out this link for an explanation.

Member Avatar for Dani

Thanks. I'm still curious though - do you think that, as with everything Google's been doing as of late - they are using data mining techniques to tailor their non-personalized search results based on the pages being filtered out?

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