Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can I use a 410'd page again at a later time?
-
I have old pages on my site that I want to 410 so they are totally removed, but later down the road if I want to utilize that URL again, can I just remove the 410 error code and put new content on that page and have it indexed again?
-
I've tested this a couple of times and each result has been: no.
If you 410 a page, Google does a bloody good job at never bringing that URL back. I've changed the response code back from a number of 410s, socially shared the page, built natural links to it, even blasted links to it (for testing's sake of course!) and Google has never reindexed it.
It's both good and bad - good in the sense that it really uses the 410 response code properly, but bad in the sense that, if you make a mistake and want to reuse the URL, you're pretty screwed.
If you're going to use it, be absolutely 100% you wouldn't see any use in using that URL again (such as offering the product again in the future etc.). If there is any doubt, leave it as a 404 or redirect it.
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
-
Using 410 To Remove URLs Starting With Same Word
We had a spam injection a few months ago. We successfully cleaned up the site and resubmitted to google. I recently received a notification showing a spike in 404 errors. All of the URLS have a common word at the beginning injected via the spam: sitename.com/mono
Technical SEO | | vikasnwu
sitename.com/mono.php?buy-good-essays
sitename.com/mono.php?professional-paper-writer There's about 100 total URLS with the same syntax with the word "mono" in them. Based on my research, it seems that it would be best to serve a 410. I wanted to know what the line of HTACCESS code would be to do that in bulk for any URL that has the word "mono" after the sitename.com/0 -
I am trying to generate GEO meta tag for my website where on one page there are multiple locations My question is, Can I add GEO tagging for every address?
Am I restricted to 1 geo tag per page or can i add multiple geo tags ?
Technical SEO | | lina_digital0 -
Getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as duplicate pages and duplicate page titles can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what might I be missing?
I am getting high priority issue for our xxx.com and xxx.com/home as reporting both duplicate pages and duplicate page titles on crawl results, I can't seem to find anything that needs to be corrected, what am I be missing? Has anyone else had a similar issue, how was it corrected?
Technical SEO | | tgwebmaster0 -
When you change your domain, How much time do I have to wait for google to return the traffic used to have?
Hello. 20 days ago, I changed my domain from uclasificados.net to uclasificados.com doing redirect 301 to all urls, and I started to loose rankings since that moment. I was wondering if changing it back could be the solutions, but some experts recommend me not to do that, because it could be worse. Right now I receave almost 50% of traffic I used to receave before, and I have done a lot of linkbuilding strategies to recover but nothing have worked until now. Even though I notified google of this change and I send again my new sitemap, I don't see that have improve my situation in any aspects, and I still see in webmastertools search stats from my last website (the website who used to be uclasificados.com before the change). What should I do to recover faster?
Technical SEO | | capmartin850 -
Are image pages considered 'thin' content pages?
I am currently doing a site audit. The total number of pages on the website are around 400... 187 of them are image pages and coming up as 'zero' word count in Screaming Frog report. I needed to know if they will be considered 'thin' content by search engines? Should I include them as an issue? An answer would be most appreciated.
Technical SEO | | MTalhaImtiaz0 -
Javascript to manipulate Google's bounce rate and time on site?
I was referred to this "awesome" solution to high bounce rates. It is suppose to "fix" bounce rates and lower them through this simple script. When the bounce rate goes way down then rankings dramatically increase (interesting study but not my question). I don't know javascript but simply adding a script to the footer and watch everything fall into place seems a bit iffy to me. Can someone with experience in JS help me by explaining what this script does? I think it manipulates the reporting it does to GA but I'm not sure. It was supposed to be placed in the footer of the page and then sit back and watch the dollars fly in. 🙂
Technical SEO | | BenRWoodard1 -
Should we use Google's crawl delay setting?
We’ve been noticing a huge uptick in Google’s spidering lately, and along with it a notable worsening of render times. Yesterday, for example, Google spidered our site at a rate of 30:1 (google spider vs. organic traffic.) So in other words, for every organic page request, Google hits the site 30 times. Our render times have lengthened to an avg. of 2 seconds (and up to 2.5 seconds). Before this renewed interest Google has taken in us we were seeing closer to one second average render times, and often half of that. A year ago, the ratio of Spider to Organic was between 6:1 and 10:1. Is requesting a crawl-delay from Googlebot a viable option? Our goal would be only to reduce Googlebot traffic, and hopefully improve render times and organic traffic. Thanks, Trisha
Technical SEO | | lzhao0 -
What's the difference between a category page and a content page
Hello, Little confused on this matter. From a website architectural and content stand point, what is the difference between a category page and a content page? So lets say I was going to build a website around tea. My home page would be about tea. My category pages would be: White Tea, Black Tea, Oolong Team and British Tea correct? ( I Would write content for each of these topics on their respective category pages correct?) Then suppose I wrote articles on organic white tea, white tea recipes, how to brew white team etc...( Are these content pages?) Do I think link FROM my category page ( White Tea) to my ( Content pages ie; Organic White Tea, white tea receipes etc) or do I link from my content page to my category page? I hope this makes sense. Thanks, Bill
Technical SEO | | wparlaman0