Google has integrated their URL Removal Tool in the Webmaster Tools console. From here, you can remove content from the Google index, by using a meta noindex tag, having the URL return a 404 or 410 status code, or block the page with the robots.txt file. Previously, you had to use a separate Google website to do this, and the website wasn’t well advertised.
I used this tool when it was on the other page to remove material that didn’t get blocked in a robots.txt right away. I removed about 50,000 pages from the index (count via Webmaster Tools), but only dropped by about 10,000 pages. In addition, the site: command showed the maximum results instead of just a page or two and the “repeat this search with the omitted results included” message.
Once your content is blocked through robots.txt, use the URL removal tool, and (in my experience) the content has been removed from the index in a matter of a couple of days. The only bug I see is that the URLs I removed via the external tool did not migrate to the Removed Content tab in the Webmaster Tools.
Update: Vanessa Fox has posted content removal details over on the Webmaster Central Blog.
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