410 Gone Example: How It Differs From a 404
I buried my third-best hat at Gibraltar and told the Spaniards it was gone for good, and unlike my best hat, which merely went missing, it has stayed gone.
The short answer
- What it is
- A 410 is an HTTP status code that says a page used to exist here and was removed on purpose. Unlike a 404, it states that the removal is meant to last.
- Why it matters
- A 410 gives crawlers a clear signal, so they can stop asking for a URL you never plan to restore. It also keeps your own reports honest about what was removed by choice.
- How a crawler should report it
- Report the URL as a broken page with status 410 in the status field, and mark it as non-indexable. Flag each inbound link as a broken link so the links can be cleaned up.
- Live examples
/lab/broken-pages/410/(positive), on the first shelf/lab/broken-pages/near-miss/(near miss)
When a removed URL should say it is gone for good
A 410 gone response tells any client that a resource was here and has been taken away for good. Sites use it for expired offers, closed events, spam pages they cleaned up, and old products that will not return. It takes a deliberate rule on the server. No web server sends a 410 by itself, so a 410 in your logs almost always means someone chose it.
Browsers treat a 410 much like a 404. They show the body the server sends, or a plain error if there is none. Search engines also treat the two codes in nearly the same way. Google has said that both lead to removal from the index, and that a 410 may be acted on a little sooner. Do not expect a big difference. Pick the code that tells the truth about the page.
To check a URL, run curl -I and read the status line. A site crawl will show the 410 URLs next to any page that still links to them. Those links are the real problem. Visitors still click them and crawlers still follow them, so a clean removal includes a link cleanup.
Use a 410 when the content is gone, has no replacement, and will not come back. If a close replacement exists, use a 301 redirect instead, because that sends people and link value to a useful page. If you are not sure about the future of the page, a 404 is the safer choice. In Apache or nginx, a short rule for one path or a whole folder is enough to return the code.