How long does it typically take Google to remove cached URLs that are outdated?

[kyrathaba]

We've run into this situation at work, recently, where a site was taken down but various URLs are still cached from Google's crawlers. The company has used the Request Removal tool to submit these links for removal. Anyone had any experience with this and how long it typically takes for removed sites to be re-indexed?

[mouser]

My experience with google and these kinds of things is that there is no way to know and no way to contact a human to find out, and no way to resolve the problem if it doesn't work.

[kyrathaba]

Gotcha, mouser. Well, the tool our IT department used lets you submit URL links that you state are outdated (which is really true in our case, since they're no longer on the website). Supposedly, these submissions alert Google that the site needs to be re-indexed and cached search results that are no longer valid need to be expunged.

[CWuestefeld]

I bet that submitting a sitemap file through the normal mechanism would help. I know they pick up our sitemaps and get them into the index *really* fast. I'm less sure about how this affects their cache.