Website hacked and spam pages showing in serps

How long does it take google to void out pages if i deleted them

[stinky]

I was using a photo gallery script and few months later my website had thousands for spam pages linking out to thousands of websites. All the pages are showing up in google.
I deleted the script from server and all pages are deleted but when i search Google i still see the pages showing up. Google shows page title and description next to each spam page but does not have the word "cached" next to it. When i click the pages i now get a Not Found (404) message.
Does google not having a cached link next to those results mean it has voided out these pages?
How long will it take so when i search google i will not see them?
If google placed a penelty on site how long would it take till its removed?
Thanks.

[icedowl]

I had a similar thing happen a couple of years ago, and it was also due to a gallery type script. Fortunately, my website was simply defaced. I had the hosting space for that site completely cleaned then rebuilt the site over a weekend. I refused to go back to using such scripts after that, there are other safer methods of getting photos online. My site didn't seem to suffer a penalty, but it did take around a month or two for google to get a grasp on the new version. Thankfully it was a rather small site and I naturally had all of the content on my home computer.

[SteveWh]

If the spam pages have names (URLs) that never existed on your site and that you don't ever want indexed, then you can configure your server (using .htaccess in Apache) to return an HTTP response code of 410 when they are requested. It means "Gone. Do not index. Remove from index."

If the pages are legitimate pages of yours that have been defaced, you should not use this method, because it would result in them being deindexed.

404 Not Found isn't as good as 410. Search engines may keep trying to crawl the pages for a long time, wondering whether they might come back online. 410 means the removal is intentional and you're not going to put them back.

[phranque]

i was ready to argue with you, SteveWh.
however i just discovered that about 6 weeks ago John Mu revealed that google has recently changed course and now treat the 410 response as "more permanent" than the 404 response [google.com].

[stinky]

That great! Question, do i need to include every spam url from my site in the .htaccess file or can i short cut this by just using the deleted folder names that housed the files?
Also do you think you can assist me in what the code to place in .htaccess file should look like?
The spam urls looks something like this:
http://www.example.com/pictures/conf/crappy-spam-stuff.html
Many thanks for help...

[edited by: phranque at 5:32 pm (utc) on Dec. 17, 2009]
[edit reason] exemplified url [/edit]

[phranque]

so you want a 410 for everything in /pictures/conf/?

[stinky]

yes those are the folders i deleted /pictures/conf/ so everything in them was spam...

Also i currently i have some commands in .htaccess file would i place new code for 410 right under it. Below is what i currently have:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Thanks

[edited by: phranque at 7:24 am (utc) on Dec. 18, 2009]
[edit reason] exemplified domains [/edit]

[phranque]

use the G flag (as in Gone):
[httpd.apache.org...]

although untested, something like this should work:
RewriteRule ^pictures/conf/ - [G]

you probably want to return that 410 before you canonicalize your domain...

[stinky]

phranque when you say this "you probably want to return that 410 before you canonicalize your domain... "
By the above do you mean i should remove the canonicalize code from my .htaccess file till the spam urls are removed?
Will leaving both sets of codes (canonicalize and 410) in the . htaccess cause an issue?
Thanks

[phranque]

no that was a hint about how you want to order your directives.