If you don't want your content to appear in the Yahoo! Search index, you can prevent the Yahoo! Search crawler, Yahoo! Slurp, from crawling the content by using the robots.txt protocol. This method keeps new content out of the index and removes content already in the index over a period of time (as the crawler tries to refresh the content.)

Note: Using robots.txt protocol method ensures that we don't crawl your excluded URLs, but does not keep the URLs themselves out of the index, because we might discover references to excluded URLs from other sources on the Web.

Sometimes webmasters need specific content removed from the index very quickly. If you've authenticated your site ownership in Site Explorer, you can now do this.

To delete a URL/Path from a site that is authenticated by you from the Yahoo! index:

1. Sign in to Yahoo! Site Explorer. Enter the URL/Path into the Explore URL box.
2. Locate the site in Explorer results. Notice the [Delete URL/Path] button next to each URL.
   Note: When you use Site Explorer to delete a URL/Path from the Yahoo! index, it deletes that URL as well as all the subpaths listed under that URL.
3. Click [Delete URL/Path] to go to the confirmation page. The confirmation page shows the number of subpath URLs that will be affected as a result of that Delete URL/Path action and lists those URLs.
4. Use the input text box to edit the URL and limit the delete action to a specific subdirectory. Click [Update] to regenerate the list of URLs that will be affected by the delete action.

   Example of deleting multiple URLs:
   Use the [Delete URL/Path] option to remove multiple URLs by truncating the URL string back to the trailing "?" mark, then clicking the [Update] button. To remove URLs that look like this:
   
   http://example.com/test/index.php?test=foo&user=john
      truncate the URL back to the '?' mark:
   http://example.com/test/index.php?
   
   Click the [Update] button to regenerate the list of URLs that will be affected by the delete action.

5. Click [Yes] to delete the URL and any subpaths listed.

When you click [Yes], the delete action is recorded and the Actions page opens. The Actions page lists all currently live actions on that site and includes actions made by all authenticated site owners.

When we have applied the Delete URL/Path action, its status on the Actions page changes from Pending Delete to In Effect. At this point the delete action starts propagating through our index and usually affects the entire index within 48 hours.

If at any time your authentication-status for a particular site changes and you no longer have access to that site, any successful delete actions you made are deactivated. In Site Explorer, the status of deletes you made for that site change to Authentication Failure and the URLs may start appearing in the Yahoo! index.

Note: You can set Site Explorer preferences to receive email notifications when you delete or undelete your authenticated sites.