Google has recently announced that there is a new feature to be found at Google Webmaster Central.
The new feature allows you to remove URLs from their index. At first glance one might think that this is a handy way to remove URLs that are generating 404 errors. These could include pages that no longer exist, or pages that are improperly linked to from outside sources.
And this is why I think you should explore why the URL is generating a 404 before you remove it.
For example, I found that many pages on my personal blog were generating 404 errors so my first thought was to just remove them from the index, so that I’d stop getting 404’s. But I started thinking a little more and decided to dig into it more.
It turns out that many of the 404’s being generated were in fact from links pointing to my site. Now, I didn’t think it would be too smart to get rid of those links by requesting URL removal so I tried a different strategy.
Rather than removing the URL’s I simply created 301 redirects to similar pages that do exist on my site. For example, I had many links pointing to old archives that I moved when I changed publishing platforms. The pages still existed, just a different URL.
Now, instead of generating 404 errors, I inherit link popularity to pages that do exist. The next time there is a backlink update my site will properly show these links (Some from very influential sites on the web, from pages that are properly aged and have decent PageRank).
So before you remove those pages, consider what I did. It may be more beneficial to you in the long run.
