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Today, I found negative rep in my account. So when I checked it I found that the question was removed. However when I tried to click the question link it didn't allowed.

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1) So what I did is I copy pasted the question title in Google and the result showed up first like this

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2) When I clicked, it redirected me to the exact question where it showed up like

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where it is removed from SO. the question is removed, why it is still showing in Google Search (that to as a first result).

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  • 12
    Caching: On Google's side.
    – Mysticial
    Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 14:52
  • Contrary to popular opinion Google does not download the entire internet every second (only most of it, about once an hour). The next time Google indexes that site (or tries to), it'll realize it is gone and eventually remove that hit from its index.
    – Joachim Sauer
    Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 14:53
  • Amazing, since from morning (IST 5.30) I tried multiple times. Yet the same thing, check here.
    – Praveen
    Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 14:54
  • 3
    Well, that's the internet for you ... search index updates might take a while (and adding stuff to the index is usually faster than removing it).
    – Joachim Sauer
    Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 14:55
  • 3
    Nothing we can do about how google does things. They will remove it when they remove it.
    – Oded StaffMod
    Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 14:59
  • 2
    @Mysticial Caching? Seems like it's always caching!
    – Andrew Barber Mod
    Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 15:06
  • 1
    "What's wrong with me, Doc?" It seems like you've caught a bad case of cacheing; take two of these and hit F5 every hour.
    – George Mitchell
    Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 15:11
  • Closely related: How to permanently delete my question from Stack Overflow?
    – ale
    Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 15:16

2 Answers 2

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Caching

We all love to blame it for every little issue, but it's valid in this case: Google simply hasn't indexed Stack Overflow (or at least that one question) since it was deleted. Therefore, Google doesn't know any better than to show it in search results.

The next time the question link is indexed, Google will figure out that it should quit linking people there.

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From Google:

If the page, site or image has already been removed from the site in question, it may still show up in Google’s search results if we have not crawled the page recently. While you wait for our search results to get updated, use this tool to request Google not to show the outdated content from the page.

So, you know, if it really bothers you, you can try to shortcut the process by reporting the URL at the tool linked above.1

For what it's worth, neither Bing nor DuckDuckGo seem to have a link to the ex-page in question. Then again, they may never have had it before it was...expunged.

1Frankly I wonder if that's not just a placebo, like "door close" buttons on elevators and "press button to cross" at crosswalks.

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