Removal tool doesn't seem to understand 410 Gone

[Mokita]

I recently used Google's URLConsole to try to remove three outdated links. All three were submitted at the same time and accepted as being gone in the first instance, then Google started sending its Java bot on a regular basis for several days to really ensure the URLs had gone for good. It showed them all as "pending" in the URLConsole Status list.

In this case, 2 URLs are returning 410 Gone and one is returning the more usual 404 Not Found.

Today I got the confirmation email, and only the URL returning a 404 has been removed. The other two still show as "pending". Maybe they will be removed later, but that remains to be seen.

It seems likely that the Java bot doesn't understand 410 as it is using the HTTP/1.0 protocol.

So perhaps the lesson is to ensure that all URLs you want removed return a 404.

I wonder why so many bots still use HTTP/1.0 rather than the infinitely better HTTP/1.1.