Old cache pages - can I force Google to exclude these?

[petrosz]

hi there,

a year ago I've changed dynamic URLs to static ones.

Recently I realized that google still keeps old web pages (with old URLs) in its index. I find old cache of these web pages in SERPs.

Is there any way to force google to exclude them from the index as probably this is a reason of why my web site has dropped in SERPs (it might be duplicate content filter).

I've made sure robots get 404 code visiting the old web pages.

Any thoughts?

cheers
pete

[Vadim]

Look at
[google.com...]

I however would rather use 301 redirect if possible from old pages to new ones.

Vadim.

[Interent Yogi]

How about this tag in the head.

<meta name="robots" content="noarchive">

[milanmk]

I had the same problem and Google Removal Tool did not help much as it takes its own time to actually remove your pages from its index, in my case the removed url's are still there after 6 months.

Then i tried 301 redirect and it works fine. Just a main googlebot crawl and all my outdated url's are gone! So i will definitely advice you to catch all your dynamic url's from htaccess and do a 301 redirect to your new static pages.

[petrosz]

I can't imagine removing manualy 1000s of outdated links...:(

will try to implement 301 redirection - nothing to loose really.

cheers
pete