GWT does not play nice with 410 status code approach to expire content? Use 301s?
-
We have been diligently managing our index size in Google for our sites and are returning a 410 status code for pages that we no longer consider "up-to-date" but still carry value for users to access to have Google remove them from our index to keep it lean.
However we have been receiving GWT warning across sites because of the 410 status codes Google is encountering which makes us nervous that Google could interpret this approach as a lack of quality of our site.
Does anyone have a view if the 410 approach is the right approach for the given example or if we should consider maybe simply using 301s or another status code to keep our GWT errors clean?
Further notes
- there is hardly ever any link juice being sent to those pages so it is not like we are missing out on that
- the pages for which we return 410 are also marked as noindex and nofollow
-
410 means "Gone" and is used to indicate a resource no longer exists. If it exists use 200 (OK). If it is out-dated place a notice to that effect but still leave it as 200. Putting a noindex instruction in the robots meta element should be sufficient to remove it from the Google index, though it may take some time. Nofollow is probably not what you want to do as this will destroy any link value flowing through those pages. If it is so out-dated that it is considered valueless then it should be deleted and 410'd. A 301 redirect can be used where a new resource that substantially replaces the old resource has been created.
Not sure why you would want to keep Google's index of your site 'lean' unless you have a lot of resources competing for the same keywords and are concerned about cannibalization.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is my content being fully read by Google?
Hi mozzers, I wanted to ask you a quick question regarding Google's crawlability of webpages. We just launched a series of content pieces but I believe there's an issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TyEl
Based on what I am seeing when I inspect the URL it looks like Google is only able to see a few titles and internal links. For instance, when I inspect one of the URLs on GSC this is the screenshot I am seeing: image.pngWhen I perform the "cache:" I barely see any content**:** image.pngVS one of our blog post image.png Would you agree with me there's a problem here? Is this related to the heavy use of JS? If so somehow I wasn't able to detect this on any of the crawling tools? Thanks!0 -
Topic research and content suggestion
Is the topic research and content suggestions that semrush gives (that is currently in beta) similar to what moz calls content suggestions ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Unnecessary 301s?
hi mozzers, I'm doing an audit on a website. I detected over 60 301s of this nature: www.example.com/help 301d to www.example.com/help/. I believe these are completely useless and increase page load time. Am I right? should i kill those 301s? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Why is a page with a noindex code being indexed?
I was looking through the pages indexed by Google (with site:www.mywebsite.com) and one of the results was a page with "noindex, follow" in the code that seems to be a page generated by blog searches. Any ideas why it seems to be indexed or how to de-index it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Duplicate blog content and NOINDEX
Suppose the "Home" page of your blog at www.example.com/domain/ displays your 10 most recent posts. Each post has its own permalink page (where you have comments/discussion, etc.). This obviously means that the last 10 posts show up as duplicates on your site. Is it good practice to use NOINDEX, FOLLOW on the blog root page (blog/) so that only one copy gets indexed? Thanks, Akira
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ahirai0 -
Duplicate content: is it possible to write a page, delete it and use it for a different site?
Hi, I've a simple question. Some time ago I built a site and added pages to it. I have found out that the site was penalized by Google and I have neglected it. The problem is that I had written well-optimized pages on that site, which I would like to use on another website. Thus, my question is: if I delete a page I had written on site 1, can use it on page 2 without being penalized by Google due to duplicate content? Please note: site one would still be online. I will simply delete some pages and use them on site 2. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0 -
What is a good content for google?
When we start to study SEO and how google see our webpage, one important point is to have good content. But, for beginners like me, we get lost on this. Is not so black and white: what for you is a good content? the text amount matters? there is any trick that all good content websites need to have?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Naghirniac0 -
Nuanced duplicate content problem.
Hi guys, I am working on a recently rebuilt website, which has some duplicate content issues that are more nuanced than usual. I have a plan of action (which I will describe further), so please let me know if it's a valid plan or if I am missing something. Situation: The client is targeting two types of users: business leads (Type A) and potential employees (Type B), so for each of their 22 locations, they have 2 pages - one speaking to Type A and another to Type B. Type A location page contains a description of the location. In terms of importance, Type A location pages are secondary because to the Type A user, locations are not of primary importance. Type B location page contains the same description of the location plus additional lifestyle description. These pages carry more importance, since they are attempting to attract applicants to work in specific places. So I am planning to rank these pages eventually for a combination of Location Name + Keyword. Plan: New content is not an option at this point, so I am planning to set up canonical tags on both location Types and make Type B, the canonical URL, since it carries more importance and more SEO potential. The main nuance is that while Type A and Type B location pages contain some of the same content (about 75%-80%), they are not exactly the same. That is why I am not 100% sure that I should canonicalize them, but still most of the wording on the page is identical, so... Any professional opinion would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | naymark.biz0