Notify search engines on 404 pages

[user072319]

How to pro-actively notify search engines (Google and others) of removed pages 404s that are still indexed?

[MS-WEB-DESIGNER]

Dear user072319,

Use Removals Tool in Search Console

[user072319]

@MS-WEB-DESIGNER 

Thank you for the response. 

We don't want to do it manually. Is there any other method which we can automate say through sitemap submission or individual URL submission API methods ?

[DigiHarsh]

A soft 404 is a URL that returns a page telling the user that the page does not exist and also a 200 level (success) code.

In some cases, it might be a page with little or no content--for example, a sparsely populated or empty page.

If your page is no longer available, and has no clear replacement, it should return a 404 not found or 410 (gone) response code. Either code clearly tells both browsers and search engines that the page doesn’t exist. You can also display a custom 404 page to the user, if appropriate: for example, a page containing list of your most popular pages, or a link to your home page.

[Sanjaykumarro]

Thank you DigiHarsh

[flareAI]

Hello @user072319,

 By submitting a sitemap of your 404 pages to Google you can expedite the removal process.

Hope this helps,

Jeena

[sillycube]

Just ping Google to update your sitemap regularly via https://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=[your sitemap url]