Current Thinking On Deleting Supp Pages & 404's

[kidder]

I have decided to rid my site of about 1000 supp pages and would like to know what the current thinking is with regards to doing this? What is the best way to setup / handle / redirect the resulting error pages?

[artdog]

If the pages really have no value then perhaps you should delete them. I dumped about 50 worthless pages about a year ago. Made no difference except to make me feel better for taking out the garbage.

Most of the site was supplemental at the time and all titles and meta tags rewritten. Content tweaked on about 1/3 of all pages.

Year later whole site no longer supplemental.

[kidder]

So how did you handle the resulting error pages?

[tedster]

Just make sure your server replies with the proper http header code (404 and 410 are treated the same by Google at present), and then you can give the browser either a custom page or the server's default error page -- it makes no difference to Google.

If by chance you now have essentially the same content at another url, then a 301 redirect might make better sense. But if the content is truly not there, or removed, just make sure that 404/410 is the server's response code.

[edited by: tedster at 12:45 am (utc) on Jan. 6, 2007]

[kidder]

Thanks Ted that is exactly what I was looking for, just wanted to make sure I was up to date.