Googlebot requesting URLs that I 410'd FIVE years ago

[crobb305]

About 5 or 6 years ago, I switched one of my sites from dynamic urls to static. I don't really do much with this site anymore, but I just noticed that Googlebot is still requesting the old 410/GONE urls even after five years! Should I try to capitalize on the inbound links by changing to 301? Would that cause problems after all this time?

[tedster]

Google never forgets a URL and the occasional check on something you removed is common.

Should I try to capitalize on the inbound links by changing to 301?

Do you know for sure that there ARE inbound links - that have any real value, that is? If you can establish that, then you might consider a 301 to equivalent content. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother.

[crobb305]

Do you know for sure that there ARE inbound links - that have any real value, that is? If you can establish that, then you might consider a 301 to equivalent content. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother.

I will double check the discovery urls to see if old inbound links are really there. My gut is telling me to not bother with switching to 301. It is a site that had a slight improvement after Panda so I probably should leave well enough alone. I was just shocked to see so many requests (40+ just since March 28 and it's a very small site, under 50 pages).

[aristotle]

Google may give less trust to webites that have a lot of 301s. So there could be some risk.