When should I nuke a page?

[dvduval]

I recently switched many pages of my website from htm to asp and cfm. Even though there is now no way to surf to the htm pages from my homepage, the htm pages are still getting hit pretty hard because of Google. In one case, Google ranks the htm page as the #2 result for my main keyphrase. I don't understand why Google continues to rank the page so high after 45 days even though there is nothing linking to it. What would be the best nuking procedure here?

[Brett_Tabke]

Extremely slow meta refresh.

But the real question is, why nuke them at all? Just leave in the redirect and let Google figure it out.

[DerekH]

Brett mentioned a slow meta-refresh...

In this last update I've used a fast meta-refresh on some now empty pages, and I've been surprised that Google has indexed them as containing the "pointed-to" content, instead of the referring message.

I'll certainly slow mine down ready for the next crawl. Indeed Google seems to have got a faster refresh than my browser, which seems to take about 3 seconds to refresh to the new page, even though there's only 1 one line text.
DerekH

[vincevincevince]

if you have proper 301 redirects set up then google will eventually remove the old pages in favour of the new, and keep incoming PR

[dvduval]

First, let me apologize,
Yesterday I made this post...
[webmasterworld.com...]
Then it didn't appear. I thought there was someting wrong so I reposted. I now know the reason: you are moderating new posts. Feel free to combine the posts if you like.

Finally, I got some great answers!
Thanks, everyone!

[Jesse_Smith]

Google takes about six months to figure out that you deleted a file.