will 404 errors on old indexed pages hurt you?

I have old pages that are index and getting 404 errors. Wondering what todo

[12scott34]

Hey Everyone,
I had a design firm build us a site that we hated and recently got rid of. The old site had a bunch of pages that we just don't use anymore. They got indexed by yahoo and show up when you type in the site URL in Yahoo. When you click on the sites they show a 404 error. I'm wondering if this will hurt me. Will they eventually just go away and my new pages show up? Do I need to put redirects on them? What would you all advise me to do?

Thanks for your hlp.

[specter]

Hi,

404 just shows that pages cannot be found because removed or deleted,altough still indexed.
Simply ignore this.They will be removed definitively from the index to the next crawling.
This willn't hurt you in any way.

[larryhatch]

If those 404 pages still get traffic, why throw that away? Wouldn't it
make more sense to have them permanently (301) redirect to the most closely related or helpful pages on your new site?
Just don't screw up and use 302 redirects, that's just a swamp even if done legitimately.

[12scott34]

Thank you so much for the replies. I was a little worried about this. The pages were not getting traffic as the site is still very new and even though it's indexed it still isn't very highly ranked yet.

Good to know that 404's won't hurt me and that they will go away.

Thanks again for the help!

Scott

[specter]

New pages have to be optimized continously if you want top results!

And remember that to move higher requires time, so be patient...