While many SEOs who are familiar with Google’s Remove URL  tool within Google Search Console know that it is only a temporary removal, it is easy to see how more novice webmasters might not realize that using the tool doesn’t remove it permanently from Google’s search index.   Google has made a few changes to the Remove URL tool to better stress this fact.

Here is how it used to look:

And here is the new and improved version:

It changes the button from “create a new removal request” to “temporarily hide”.  It has also changed the description to state that it is only a temporary removal, and that if a webmaster wants to remove the content permanently, they still must remove or change the source page as well.

This is a nice change, as there have definitely been webmasters who were confused over the permanence of the removal, with many believing they were removed permanently.  However, once the time expired, those URLs were considered fair game for indexing unless the pages were removed, blocked by robots.txt or had the content changed from whatever it was about the page they didn’t want indexed.

This change seems to be live in all Google Search Console accounts now.