How to remove old pages that SHOULD be 404 but redirect to homepage?

Discussion in 'SEO' started by wavefront, Nov 17, 2006.

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  1. #1
    A few months ago I switched one of my forums from phpBB to vBulletin.
    I can safely say that was a great decision.

    BUT one problem has stemmed from this. My phpBB was in the root,
    and I've built a portal around the forums, so vbulletin is now in /forum

    So, pages that were indexed in Google from the phpBB version are
    still there...pages with viewtopic.php, profile.php, etc...they're all
    in the supplemental index.

    I just don't want them in there at all. Brian and SEOPosition.com
    told me that it was hurting my rankings to have them there,
    and that I should set up a script to somehow redirect those
    specific pages to a 404 page instead of my homepage.

    Honestly I don't know why it redirects to the homepage, but the
    problem with that is that Google might think there is duplicate content
    all over my site - not good.

    What's everyone's take on this and what would you do about it?
     
    wavefront, Nov 17, 2006 IP
  2. Notorious

    Notorious Well-Known Member

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    #2
    I have the same problem,i have tried everything 404,301,410 but those old pages just wont go.
     
    Notorious, Nov 17, 2006 IP
  3. wavefront

    wavefront Well-Known Member

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    #3
    I spoke with Brian a bit more about it and he mentioned doing something with apache and that one of his developers could possibly handle it.

    I'm in contact with them and waiting for a verdict. I'll let you know what they say.
     
    wavefront, Nov 17, 2006 IP
  4. bentong

    bentong Banned

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    #4
    yes, create a custom 404 page and block the files in your robots.txt

     
    bentong, Nov 17, 2006 IP
  5. Barti1987

    Barti1987 Well-Known Member

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    #5
    The best thing to do, for SEO, is that you place a viewtopic.php, profile.php, etc.. that redirect to the new forum with specific info.

    For example in viewtopic.php you will place something like this:

    newlink.com/forum/viewthread.php?threadid=XXX

    unless you made a fresh install on VB (did not convert phpbb database) then that is the best option and you won't have to lose any SEO points.

    Peace,
     
    Barti1987, Nov 17, 2006 IP
  6. oseymour

    oseymour Well-Known Member

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    #6
    google can take a long time to drop pages from its index....I've seen pages in the index 8 months after I deleted
     
    oseymour, Nov 20, 2006 IP
  7. wavefront

    wavefront Well-Known Member

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    #7
    Great suggestions! There are literally thousands of pages with the viewtopic, profile and other php files with arguments in the URLs, so I don't think it would be feasible to create the php files with redirects to specific threads.

    What's the code for the "Gone" error page? That's what we have set up now because according to the developer, our CMS was causing a big problem with doing 404 instead.
     
    wavefront, Nov 23, 2006 IP
  8. cormac

    cormac Peon

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    #8
    410 but many people experience that Google doesnt read a 410 correctly and the Googlebot will keep coming back looking for the page. Its believed they may do this to check if you have actually replaced the pages with something else.
     
    cormac, Nov 23, 2006 IP