Mistake.. How can I fix.

We have a system that gives examples of orders our customers have placed. Each order has it's own page so we can talk about it. We made a mistake in the script we built and it was generating blank pages.

http://www.versatables.com/dcustomers.php?page_no=995

I'm not sure how many of these pages were created maybe unlimited who knows.. basically I just don't know. I do know that Google was giving them a page rank... so google did spider them. I've fixed the script and I wanted to do something to fix this in my .htaccess so what is the best way to fix this, so that google knows these pages should not exist.. should i just block off access in to that directory?

 

Put something in the page so if its blank it 301 redirects to the homepage.

 

Oh, that looks kind of bad....

the best way to fix it is probably first, fix the bug in your code. then, go to the database (MySQL or whatever, and alter the entries). hmm.. that might not help, but see how it works.

Make sure you back up first!

 

would just making them be 404's be really bad?

 

404 does not make the site look professional. A 301 redirect would be more preferred for a professional site.

 

<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.new-url.com" );
?>

 

If the page is blank..

 

Yes. Thats fine.

A 404 will take longer to be removed from Google than a 301.

 

Thanks for your help guys.