Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I obviously now have 2 pages not being used so will be deleted from my site. Should I also remove these pages from Webmaster Tools using the delete URL section or should I just remove them from my site and sitemap etc and let Google update as necessary?
Also, after deleting the pages, is there a way I can redirect them to the new page in case anyone does still use the old links?
Eventually, Google will drop urls where any of the three conditions above are met - you only need to request a removal if you need to speed things up. They may continue to spider the url for an indefinite time period, usually with decreasing frequency, but as long as one of the conditions is still met, the url should not re-appear.
Here's more detail, from Google's Help pages:
Preventing content from appearing in Google search results [google.com]
Also, after deleting the pages, is there a way I can redirect them to the new page in case anyone does still use the old links?
The word "page" has no technical definition, so I'm going to use other terminology. You may delete content, but a redirect will requires that the url is still active. If a redirect is in place, it won't matter if the content is still hiding somewhere on the server, because no user agent, will have it served to them, neither spider or browser.
You can redirect requests for the old urls using a 301 permanent redirect - be sure not to use any other method of redirect except one that returns a 301 status. The technical details will be specific to your type of server - and are best discussed in either our Apache Forum [webmasterworld.com] or our Microsoft IIS Forum [webmasterworld.com].
If you use a 301 redirect, Google will drop the urls from the index on their own.
