In Google and other search services, how do I remove a web page from their cache so that my data is no longer retrievable?

If you have information posted to a web page that was indexed by a web search service (e.g., Google), and you want to remove that data from the service's search results:

1. Remove the page file from its current directory, which should cause your web browser to return a standard 404 error message when directed to that page. Merely removing the content will not clear the cache of the search engines.
   
   
2. Initiate a request with the search service to clear your URL from the cache. For Google, you can use the Webpage Removal Request Tool.
   
   
3. Place a robots.txt file to block future index crawling. See What are web search robots, and how do they affect me?

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