Removing a large number of pages from site

is it better to use a 301 redirect or 404 error?

[irl_clo]

Hello,
I am a long time reader here at WebmasterWorld and have always found advice here to be accurate and helpful so I thought I would ask for some advice on an issue I am having.

I have a site which ranks quite well in Google and I have decided to remove a large number (over 100) of pages which made up my link directory from my site and start from scratch with a new link directory, file-names, everything as many of the links are out of date or irrelevent.

My issue is whether I should put 301 redirects in place which redirect to the main page of the link directory(which I am keeping). If I do this, they will all point to the same page. Will this cause a problem with Google? Will it be seen as spamming?

Or should I just delete them and allow Google pick up on the 404's, of which there will be over a hundred. Could this have a negative effect on my site?

Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

[Patrick Taylor]

irl_clo... welcome to WebmasterWorld.

I think the simple answer is that a 301 redirect is to be used when the content of a page has been permanently moved from one URL to another. A 404 is when an URL no longer exists. As each URL is supposed to be a unique resource, the safe option in your case would be to delete the pages with content that you no longer require, and leave it at that, except perhaps use a custom 404 page.

Of course... there may be better and more complex answers.

[MrSpeed]

There are some that feel a 410 error is better in this case. It seems like lately with 404's it takes forever for them to dissapear from google. I still like 404's though, it's easier.

Does anyone have suggestions for removing an entire site from Google for the purposes of starting from scratch?

I wonder if Brett has stumbled upon the best way to remove pages from Google? It will be interesting to see what happens when he allows spiders back in.

[irl_clo]

Thank you Patrick Taylor and MrSpeed for your replies.

I do want to try and avoid using the 404 as I would like to avoid having upwards of 100 broken links on the site! I hadn't considered using a 410 status code though it does sound quite appropriate. I want the SEs to know these pages are gone and not to index them anymore.

Is the 410 code used in a similar fashion to a 404?
Does anyone else have experience using this?
Will Google(and other SEs)once they encounter a 410 'respect it', in other words, will they cosider it a permanent removal?

Thanks again.

[Patrick Taylor]

As a general rule I would be inclined to stick to the idea that "a page is a page". If you have deleted pages then surely you will also delete the links to those pages. Unless you really know what you're doing, I wouldn't try anything too fancy.