Redesigning the site with same Domain (IMP.)

[Personnel_Concept]

technical SEO question -

If we take down a site and use the same domain but just redesign the whole site.

I guess sometimes in this case Google still keeps indexing old pages though they do not exist now! What the solution for this?

Google suggests redirect them to a 404 page but in this case as its same domain-

Is it possible that we throw 404 errors and redirect them to 404 page and this 404 page exists in the new site itself (but of course we don't have link our menu to this 404 page) (if that makes sense)?

Would appreciate if you can suggest or add anything to above topic.

[irvingw]

If they have any PR at all you should 301 them to the most appropriate pages or categories and not let them 404. Only 404 junk pages with no matches that have no PR.

[ngupta1]

well according to me if you have taken the website down and pages are removed , then you don't need to redirect them to 404 , i.e. if something doesn't exists its automatically redirected to 404 , first thing you can do is remove those links from webmaster tools via remove tool and robot.txt file , ( it will take some time but the links will be removed ) secondly if you are worried about 404 and want to redirect it something meaningful , in my opinion that would be better idea , just redirect all the pages which don't exist to a single page displaying

( Thanks for vising us , we are updating ourselves to provide you better service or product or anything .... You may find what you are looking for at this link ( Give the link of some alternate or the same source ) or just ask the visitor to wait for a while with a email subscription box and comment , just in-case they prefer to mail you what they are looking for.

I hope this helps.