I recently helped a friend and fellow blogger deal with a lingering Google cache issue. The search behemoth still listed a page from her blog that she thought she had deleted, but had merely "delinked." Even if she removed the page now, I warned, the cached version would still be available unless she contacted Google and asked them to remove it (Note: Google's page for webmasters describes how you can do this).
This reminded me of a similar incident I dealt with a couple years ago.
When I played baseball for the Madtown M's, the manager used to follow up each game by writing an amusing recap on the team's web site (a graphic-less archive of which can be found here). The recaps were all written in an over-the-top sportswritery style complete with tortured nicknames for the players, egregious verbing, and wild exaggerations of our on-the-field accomplishments.
After one of our games, a number of team members announced that they were heading to a nearby Hooter's restaurant for some post-game festivities. The manager derided them in his next recap by writing a fictional account of how they were arrested for disorderly conduct after mashing on one of the waitresses.
Two years later, one of the team members implicated in this fictional scandal contacted me in a panic. He had been applying for jobs at law firms and one of his potential employers found the humorous piece during a routine background check (read: Google search). Taken out of context, it was difficult to determine that the piece was satirical on its face. He was able to convince them that it was a joke, but he worried (understandably) that other employers might not be so forgiving.
I promptly removed the offending section from the page and contacted Google to remove it from the cache. I'm happy to report that it was gone within a couple days.
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