Using 410 code to deindex a big section of a website.

[Solipsism]

Hi everyone,

I need advice for something i attempt to do.

I have a website divided in 2 sections, one with a lot of trafic around 10 000 urls and an other part with 20 000 urls with really poor trafic and no rankings.
So i will delete the 20 000 urls from my website and send a 410 code.

Do you think sending 20 000 urls with a 410 code can hurt the other 10 000 urls.
I precise that there is no internal link between them and the 2 parts are really distinct.

Technically i think this can't hurt my 10 000 urls but may be the signal send to Google "hello, i have delete 2/3 of my website, you can desindex it" is a bit risky ?

Thank you :)

[not2easy]

It may help if you can first noindex those 20000 pages with either a metatag that replaces "index, follow" with "noindex, noarchive" - or a folder-wide X-robots tag for the same purpose. It would probably help if you are not listing them on sitemaps before serving a 410. The best steps may depend on what you can do easily. It would make no sense if each page needs a manual edit to update, for example.

To decide whether it can be risky, ask yourself why these 20000 pages do not receive traffic. If it is because they are pages about old products or subjects that were news once and now unimportant then these are natural reasons to noindex and remove pages.

[tangor]

Don't forget no-cache

Goes a long way. :)

[tangor]

Secondary ... and this is just ME and NOT BEST ADVICE ... if any page is no longer valid I just delete the critter and don't worry, logging the 404s in the raw logs.

Not best practice according to SEO mantras, but is very efficient for the site, and THE PAGE IS TRULY GONE, so can't hurt me no matter what.

YMMV

Aside: It's not my job to make g's index look good or even give hints. It is their job to do their declared job. That means, if it (1 or 20,000) ain't there, it's gone.

That said, 410 is the tool most use.

That said, no SE forgets any url it has met and will continue to hammer for YEARS AFTER (and I mean up to 15 years) pages that disappeared 14 years ago.

Way I see it, if they don't play nice, why should I?

Waiting for the howls that will surely follow that declaration.

[tangor]

Tertiary ... I don't allow caching in the first place. (Not that that directive is given lip-service or honored---as real life has revealed).

Old curmudgeon webmastering.

NOT CURRENT PRACTICE, just an example of Old School that still has some validity.

[lucy24]

And finally ... If you do go the 410 route, make sure you either have a nice 410 page for humans, or add an ErrorDocument directive (or non-Apache equivalent) to use your existing 404 page for both. The Apache default 410 page is scarier than the default 404 page; you don’t want to alarm those two humans who had your former pages bookmarked.

[Solipsism]

Ok thank you everyone for your useful answers. :)
I can give you more precision about my 20 000 urls.
In fact they are international content of the 10 000 good urls.
10 000 urls are 100% duplicate because it the same language but not the same country.
10 000 urls are an other language.
Since the may core update, my website has been hurt and i think it is due to this new 20 000 urls bad content, even if i have good hreflang, good sitemaps and GSC for each country.

So this is why i want to delete it.