: Page gone: 404, or other options? I have a website which is actually a search engine to search through our data. Each item has its own detailpage, and a search returns a list of matching data,

@Alves908

If your content has been removed then simply use the 410 stating that the page did exist however it has been removed. Only use a 301 redirect when you want to tell google that page has moved. If you use these incorrectly this could impact on your SEO quick drastically.

So in my option implement a 410 error message on the pages that have moved.

I would also generate a sitemap automatically and submit this to google. As you have new content google will recognise this and start spidering your content quicker.

If you are unsure about how generating a very substantial sitemap for your site consider creating a master sitemap every month and adding an additional sitemap with the newly added links every day or every couple of days until you manage to create another master sitemap. This way you will be constantly notifying google of changes which they like. See here

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@Angela700

Returning a 404 not found response would normally suffice and in the nature of your website, the amount of these being raised in Google WMT will likely only be temporary whilst they update their index (unless there are other websites linking to these pages that you are removing) so this would not cause a problem.

Alternatively, serving a 410 gone response would also be okay as these pages are permanently gone. A 410 for pages that will never return at that URL in the quantity that you have would be best though.

Either will be reported in Google WMT though yet there only messages as such rather than 'errors' regarding your website. There is no direct negative affect from serving 404's or 410's providing they are used correctly.

You can also read what Google have to say on this.

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