404 or 410 after i delete my WP site?
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Hello, simple question but cannot find answer please: I plan to permanently completely delete my old WP.com website. Question: Do viewers see a 404 message or a 410 please? 410 is best as it tells search engines the delete is deliberate and they stop crawling the old site. Any help appreciated. regards Gaye
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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I do want to add, though, if you intend to move the content to some other site, we have a redirect option that will send /any-url/whatever to the same link on the new domain. That uses a 301.
And, if you choose to delete this site, note the name (after 30 days) will not be available at any time in the future. If there’s a chance you might want to reuse it someday, I’d recommend just making it private instead.
Let us know if you have questions on that.
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Hi Supernovia, thankyou for such a fast and helpful reply. What I am hoping to achieve is to stop search engines, essentially Google bots, trawling the old site or showing it in SERPs. If I make the site Private I imagine it will confuse people. Am I correct that a 301 will only work if I have Exactly the same URLs (by this does it mean the same URL slug?) for Every page on my new website or just Homepage sufficient?
many thanks Gaye -
If the site is deleted, search engines and other bots will see a 410 (gone), which Google recommends and will result in them removing it from their index (eventually).
Visitors will see a notice that the site has been deleted.
If you use the Site Redirect upgrade https://wordpress.com/support/site-redirect/ the site will need to remain online (not be deleted), and it will issue 301 (permanent) redirect to the same URL but under the new domain, so the permalink structure and post slugs on the new site will need to remain unchanged.
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Thankyou Macmanx. one follow up clarification: my WP site is very old and u used. I doubt Google crawls it under every six months. Im wondering if This might work:
1. verify the old site in Google Search Console before I delete it
2. Delete sight completely and get 410
3. Ask Google search console to reindex the site so it will pick up the 410?A plan???
Thanks so much Gaye -
You won’t need to do steps 1 and 3, unless you want to speed up the process.
That will work, but also the Googlebot will eventually come across the site on its own, see the 410, and remove it.
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Thankyou MacManx yes i do want to speed up the process as mentioned Google bots seldom trawl old unused websites. thanks to both staffers for your help today. happy hols Gaye
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