Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Google still lists a few of these old pages in search as if they were still online. Not as supplemental either.
Links to these old pages from other sites still exist. I guess a lot of site owners don't check their links very often.
I've considered doing 301 redirects for those old pages, but the sheer quantity of them seems like it would be a nightmare to accomplish. It would also take me a month of Sundays and then some to add that many 301's. Not a task I really care to do.
I've tried simply blocking access to the folder that they had been in with no luck. Google just doesn't want to forget them.
If I bring them back, should I add a note to each page (a small task) to let any visitors know that they are on old pages?
Opinions? Possible downsides? Possible Upsides?
Be sure all the pages (all orphans) are not only 'unlinked' but physically removed from the server - xenu is your friend.
Make sure you have a quality 404 page, that should not be a worry.
Monitor your stats; you''ll find the number of visitors to those pages is small and diminishing, as newer pages (that really exist) will tend to be above them (or replace them) in the serps.
If any pages do get more than a handful of visitors, 301 those pages alone.
'Ghost' pages exist more in the serps than in the real world - webmasters see them becase thy search for domain names. Visitors, searching for keywords, will rarely visit - and in most cases, a quality 404 page will suffice. It doesn't have to look like a 404 - visitors will think it's simply an index.
But check the stats to 301 any that really need it (very, very few, I bet)
They definitely do not exist on the server and haven't for 17 months. I do have a 404 page that has a link on it to the home page of the current version of the site and good navigation to follow from there.
Page names (URLs) are entirely different. All of the old content was brought over to the current version, so those 400+ pages could be seen as duplicate content.
But check the stats to 301 any that really need it (very, very few, I bet)
That amounts to about 40 pages at last count.
Thanks!
Why not put some of those links on the 404 page; saving visitors that one click can make a serious difference - and arriving at an 'obvious' 404 page is not the best intro to your site.
May be worth double checking that none of your pages have links to the 'dead' pages - it's links that keep the ghosts alive, and 'internal' links are the worst!
Personally I hate serving up 404's, either to humans or to SE spiders, and even at this late date I suggest you go that route.
Here's what I think it will take to accomplish this task:
1. All of the old pages are here on my PC. I simply have to locate the files that they are stored in and grab the URLs.
2. Collect the current URLs that are the equivalent of the old URLs.
3. Build a basic 301 that I can copy/paste and then plug in the proper URLs, matching old to new.
4. Paste the entire thing into my .htaccess, which sounds like it will be a huge addition. Do folks usually have such large .htaccess files?
I go back to the early 1980's with DOS but I just don't see how DOS could play a helpful part in this.
Well, I guess I'm off to the races. So to speak.
Bingo. Some simple editing and you've got a text list of all the page names in just a minute or so. That's the basis of your .htaccess file.
If they're in multiple directories, you need to go to the lowest one and do a "dir /s" instead, and massage the resulting file.
That may not be faster than whatever you're planning on doing, but that's why I brought DOS into it.
Lingering 404 pages are often caused by the fact that the 404 page is really a 302 redirect rather than a true 404 error.
