How Long Does It Take for Search Engines to Index or Remove a Document?

When you make changes to your documents, such as hiding or showing them to search engines, it’s important to understand that these changes are not immediately reflected in search engine indexes. Here’s what you need to know about the timeframe and the process:

What is Indexing and Why Does It Take Time?

Indexing is the process search engines like Google, Bing, and others use to discover and catalog web pages and documents so that they can appear in search results. When you change a document’s privacy settings, such as hiding it from search engines, search engines need to revisit your page and update their indexes to reflect the change.

How Long Does It Take?

While changes to a document’s privacy settings are applied immediately on our platform, it can take up to 3 weeks for search engines to update their results. This delay occurs because search engines independently decide when to revisit your page to update their indexes.

What Happens During This Time?

During the up to 3-week period, search engines may still display your document in search results, even if you have set it to be hidden. Once the search engines have updated their indexes, your document will be hidden according to your new settings.

How Can I Hide a Document from Search Engines?

To hide a document from search engines, follow the steps outlined in our guide here: How Do I Hide My Document from Search Engines?

This guide provides step-by-step instructions on how you can adjust your document’s privacy settings so that it no longer appears in search results.

Important Points to Remember:

• Be Patient: Since updating search engine indexes is beyond our control, it’s important to be patient and wait out this period.
• Check the Changes: You can check if your document is still visible by searching for it directly on search engines. If it still appears, it’s likely that the index update is not yet complete.

If you have any further questions or need assistance, please feel free to contact our support team.