To remove or not remove URLs...?

Community
1

What is your opinion on removing URLs with the google/bing webmaster tools?

Is it really better to remove them if, as google states, it doens’t affect your ranking and you have them already redirecting to your site/correct page? The links are already in google/bing after all, if the users click them, they will never know they are being redirected…

Of course, if it is 1 or 2 links no probs, you can just remove them…but if we are talking about 200 links, wouldn’t the redirect keep everybody happy?

2

I’m not too keen on 200 redirect links. Users will probably cancel it or something while still in the middle of loading the page.

3

I know what you mean, but the redirect is set to 0 seconds, so you basically don’t even know you are getting redirected.

4

I wouldn’t want too many redirects in the long run. Much better to remove them if this will be permanent.

5

You can remove through Google Webmaster tools … See if that page is redirecting to the 404 error then better to remove the link

6

If you are hosting on an Apache Server you can use a rewrite map for this. Look into the hosting forums here and ask about it. A rewrite map is used specifically for the kind of redirection you want.

Steve