Pages that are permanently deleted

How to tell search engines to stop looking for them?

[GaryK]

I'm not exactly new to web development.

I am new to the issue of search engines continuing to look for pages that have been deleted. This is the first time I have permanently deleted a page as opposed to simply renaming it.

I'm fairly certain I need to send a 301 response, but if the page no longer exists, how do I do that?

Do I need to re-create the page and use it to send the 301 response?

I am using ASP Classic on IIS 5.

[Span]

If the page is gone and never to come back I send 410 Gone.

[GaryK]

Thank you for a quick reply. My assumption based on your answer is I have to re-create the .asp page in order to send the 410. Am I correct in that assumption or is there a different, perhaps better way to do this?

For example, I have a 404 error handler page. I could modify that to check what file returned the 404 and instead of showing my normal error handling page I could instead send the 410. Would that work?

[Span]

I am using a "Redirect gone /folder/subfolder/file.html" in an .htaccess (with a CGI), so the server responds with a 410 Gone. I'm not sure what status your server will respond with a modified 404 error handler. But you can check that with the Server Header checker.

[webmasterworld.com ]

[GaryK]

Thanks again. I'll try modifying my error handler and see what happens. Sadly I don't have anything as simple as an .htaccess file in IIS to help with this problem.