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1. winnyking
   Member
   Apr 2, 2009, 8:20 PM

   Hello,

   I would like to clarify an issue that a fellow blogger here on wordpress has experienced, regarding unused, deleted tags.
   I am asking this question instead of him, because the tag in question concerns me more (it is kind of personal) :) Basically he had added a unique tag(no other blog on wordpress has it) when he created a new entry in his blog a couple weeks ago, but earlier today he deleted the tag from both his blog entry and from the list of all his tags.
   Lets assume the tag was 'ratataaa'. It is not the real tag(sorry, I don't want to mention the real one), I just give you it as an imaginary tag.

   After the tag had been removed earlier today, wordpress still has 2 seperate pages for it:
   lv.wordpress.com/tag/ratataaa
   baigaalapa.wordpress.com/tag/ratataaa

   again, these are not real urls, but the structure is the same - just replace 'ratataa' with the real tag and 'baigaalapa' with the real blog name and you get the 2 pages I am concerned about.
   My question is, when will these pages be deleted, and are they even deleted automatically? I am asking this because when googling the tag in question, the tag pages and the specific blog still come up in search results. Yes I know it takes time for google to recrawl the pages and everything, but I just want to make sure that they will not stay in google search forever or something. Also, when searching the tag in google images, all sorts of pictures posted on the blog come up. Will these pictures also not show up in search results for the tag after some time?

   Sorry for such a complicated description, but this issue is really concerning me, as the tag is rather personal and I don't want any info regarding this tag to be on wordpress or in google search results :))

   If you want me to clarify some info regarding this(I can imagine this long post a bit confusing), let me know!!

   Thanks for any help.

   Winny.

2. raincoaster
   Member
   Apr 2, 2009, 8:25 PM

   They will not normally be deleted. The person who created the tag COULD contact staff and ask them to delete it, but otherwise it would just stay up.

3. thesacredpath
   Member
   Apr 2, 2009, 8:31 PM

   I expect that it may take a little time for the tags pages here at wordpress.COM to update depending on server loads and such. I would check back in several hours.

   As far as Google goes, it could be 4-6 months before they disappear from Google searches - perhaps longer - and some search engines such as Yahoo never seem to delete anything, so they may be at Yahoo for millennia. And then there is the web archive, which keeps everything ever posted on the web - deleted or not - theoretically forever (which is a really, really, really long time).

   Bottom line? Once it has been put on the web and has been picked up by the search engines and the web archive, it is always going to be there somewhere.

4. winnyking
   Member
   Apr 2, 2009, 8:35 PM

   Thanks for the reply raincoaster and thesacredpath. However it would be strange if it is as you say raincoaster, because the real version of this imaginary tag page (baigaalapa.wordpress.com/tag/ratataaa) does already give the 404 error in the main screen - The sidebars are visible, but there are obviously no entries associated with the tag so it just says - error 404 in the center of the screen, where all the posts and entries usually should be. So will this page really stay in wordpress, even though it does not contain any info? And even if it stayed on wordpress, would I be correct to assume that google would drop this page from search results after some time due to error 404?

5. raincoaster
   Member
   Apr 2, 2009, 8:38 PM

   That's the individual blog's tag page. I would expect that would go 404. What I'm talking about is the global tag page; as far as I know, they don't go away at all.

6. winnyking
   Member
   Apr 2, 2009, 8:43 PM

   Oh, ok, thanks for clarifying.

   But boy oh boy, this situation stinks!
   I am actually starting to hate the internet a bit because of this!!! :)) I guess it is really hard to get any personal information out of all the places!!!
   But I guess my best options are to contact google and ask them not to include those empty tag pages in search results.

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