How do Google and Google Scholar find, index and update content on SSRN?

Both Google Search and Google Scholar use automated web crawlers (also called spiders or bots) that systematically visit SSRN pages to discover and ingest content. These crawler-based systems compile information about an article from sources across the internet. SSRN has no control over when Google will index a paper posted to its site — the timing depends on many factors including the search engine's crawl frequency.

As long as your paper is displaying on your SSRN Author Page, Google will eventually crawl the page and index new or updated content.

What content does Google index from SSRN?

Google can index all metadata including the full-text PDF from publicly available SSRN pages. A key advantage of this is that the majority of SSRN content is freely available, whereas Google will not generally index content that sits behind a paywall.

How long does it take for a new SSRN paper to appear in Google or Google Scholar?

The frequency and availability of new content is at the discretion of the search engine platform. SSRN has no control over when our pages are indexed.

How can I remove an SSRN Paper/Page from Google Search Results?

If you wish to remove a paper from Google's search results, it is necessary to first remove that paper from your SSRN Author Page. To do so, sign in to your SSRN My Papers page and change the submission status to 'Inactive' (located under the Availability column). Once the submission is displaying in your Inactive Papers section of your My Papers page, it will fall off your SSRN Author Page and will subsequently fall off Google's search results over time. For urgent removal, authors can use Google's Remove Outdated Content tool.

To request removal of the page:

1. Go to the Google public URL removal tool at Remove outdated content from Google Search. You will need to log into your Google account or create an account if you do not already have one. These steps noted below are appropriate when asking for a removal from the general Google search results. This does not apply to Google Scholar. Google Scholar removals happen organically when Scholar recrawls our site.
2. Enter a New Request to refresh Google's outdated result for a webpage that has changed
3. Enter the URL of the removed submission

Can I correct or remove Google Scholar content?

Google Scholar does not offer a direct removal tool for authors. Unlike Google Search (which has the Remove Outdated Content tool), Google Scholar has no equivalent mechanism for an individual author to request that a paper be de-indexed. The process is indirect: remove or revise your submission on SSRN and wait for Google Scholar. Google Scholar will eventually update - but this can take a long time often 6–9 months or longer.