Removing Bad Links, Bad?

[SQE-SEOMoz]

Our situation is this..

We recently went through a major redesign that included a significant change in content and URL structure. This of course cause a significant increase in 404 from our search traffic.

In an effort to minimize those 404s we requested that Google remove certain URL directories from their index. Doing this resulted in a 90% drop in the number of impressions we were getting from search.

My question is this, is it better to allow the 404s with a good landing page that explains the changes or better to remove the bad urls?

Much thanks...

[SQE-SEOMoz]

Fortunately isn't too late, Google does allow us to put them back into the index.

That said, there isn't a way to determine which section would be appropriate on the fly and to manually map the individual pieces of content would be time and labor prohibitive. That said, would it be appropriate to do a 301 (permanently  moved) on content that has been removed? I would think a 410 (gone) would be the most correct.

Any thoughts on what would be better, the high level of 404s or the a more accurate index on google?

Thanks again.

[irvingw]

Why didn't you 301 redirect them to the most appropriate section?

It seems a little late if you already requested the 404s to be removed from the index.