On our corporate web site (which is probably 600-800 pages), we recently deleted about 20-25 outdated web pages. Most of these were in the same 2-3 folders. We did not do a 301 redirect because we no longer offer this product category (ie. it is fine with us if we no longer have good page rank or much presence in this category.) It is like selling fruits, wine, and meats, and then the meat category goes away. I am wondering: (a) The URL may still show up in Google even though we have deleted it, correct? (b) If so, how long will those pages continue to show up in the search engines? Thanks for any input!
You should always provide a redirect if you delete a page from your site. What if someone had bookmarked the specific page? It's better to redirect them to the homepage than to give a 404 not found error. As for the pages still showing up on google, you can request for them to be taken out of the index from Google's Webmaster Tools, it'll take some time but eventually they'll get around to it. In the mean time, why not spend the 2 minutes it'll take and update your .htaccess to redirect the old pages to the main index.
Visitors won't like these suddenly missing pages and neither will Google. You may not be worried about page rank for those category pages, but it can affect the quality score of your entire web site and thus other page rankings.
Even if you delete any page , its possible that it still apears in google search. The reason is that if you place links of this page somewhere on other sites like forums or social sites. than these links are also present in google index. You have to tell the google to deindex the page completely (including its links). You can tell google through webmaster tool.
It's better to redirect all deleted pages or 404 page. After deleting pages google still shows your pages in search results until next update..
You should redirect all the pages through 301 or use robots.txt for those pages which you are deleted then it will they down the serps.... Major disadvantage: If you will not redirect and don't use robots.txt then where you that page link is submitted in directory or articles then google consider those links as broken links
What is .htaccess? I did a quick web search on this, and it looks like it is mostly for Apache? We are Microsoft based. I don't know what the Microsoft web server is -- Windows? But it looks like, in the .htaccess file, we could say that pages don't exist anymore should have a 301 redirect? We use a custom 404 page. Would doing something like this in .htaccess (a 301 redirect) overide our 404 pages? Thanks for the other input also, though.
Hello KathyAd, Since you are MS based, I suggest you perform the 301 redirects in IIS. The latest version of IIS has ISAPIRewrite built in (finally). Get familiar with this as you will want to understand this fully for future implementations. You need to do these 301 redirects soon. Google will devalue your domain because this is a quality issue. As a sidenote, Google never forgets pages that are abandoned. They just put these pages in Supplemental Results until you deal with them in an emphatic way.
Me again. Can I also ask about the URL Removal Tool in Webmaster Tools. I found a URL to request this at google.com/webmasters/tools/removals , but is this page for requesting removals on sites where I AM the webmaster? I do not want to request removals and make it look like I am a customer complaining about the site. And how do I find this tool by drilling down in the Webmaster Tools area? Sorry for all the basic questions. It must make you all you are answering feel knowledgable And it is helping me! Thanks.
Google Webmaster Tools >> Site Configuration >> Crawler access >> Click on the "Remove URL" tab. However, I don't recommend this. You don't need it and it does not take care of your original problem. Do the 301 redirects to new pages.
I would say they will still show up until next time Google tries to cache them - and then it should notice a broken link and repair its database. If you have any external links pointing to these pages then a 301 should transfer link juice to your main site.
301 redirect those pages URLs to the most similar product you have on your site...or similar section. Don't just let your old URLs vanish...thats bad for the user and engines.