Canonical Tag effect after the URL no longer resolves?

[delsoijj]

Hey Guys,

If there is a canonical tag on www.mysite.com pointing to www.mysite.com (<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mysite.com"/>) search engines will ensure only this URL is index and other duplicate pages like "www.mysite.com/home.asp" "mysite.com" etc will be replaced (if they are indexed in GYB) with www.mysite.com.

Now, let's say a 3rd party website has a been linking to "www.mysite.com/home.asp" but I decide to remove the "/home.asp" from the server. That 3rd party site will now be linking to a error page (404) because that page does not exist on the server.

My question is, does Google now discounts the link juice now because I've removed that page from the server? My thinking is that Google seen initially seen the <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.mysite.com"/> tag on www.mysite.com/home.asp but now that page has been removed so no SEO juice will be passed from the 3rd party site to www.mysite.com. Thoughts? Oh and 301's is out of the picture since it is a problem for my IT team to manage a bunch of 301s to mulitiple URLs.

[g1smd]

Add the home.asp file back on the server with just an ASP 301 redirect in the file.

[DeeCee]

delsoijj,
If your IT team have a problem managing necessary 301s from old pages, then you have a larger problem, since changes of course WILL happen on your site and 301s are a fact of life, if you want to keep your juice.

So a) you'd better get a new team to manage the site, or b) wait the months/years until lost juice rebuilds itself.

Nothing so-called "IT teams" hate more than having their tasks "out-sourced" to someone better suited for the job. It surprises me, that someone in today's job environment would dare say that they "can't manage" something that obvious. Especially when that task can be managed by anyone else with knowledge from across a world network.