“The pages are gone, so communicate that.”
-Greg Bernhardt, Shopify Staff, 3/30/2023
Conveniently enough, there’s an HTTP code for that that. It’s called 410 - Gone! What’s super cool is it tells google that the page is “gone”, not “missing” so google stops looking for it, they publicly acknowledged that 410’s get pulled faster. I know per our DM’s that you are aware of every single piece of information above so your response defending the 404 decision is concerning.
Maybe you acknowledged what I said but just thought I was wrong, I’m just a forum member. Why don’t we ask the most respected source out there, the Internet Engineering Task Force.
The 410 (Gone) status code indicates that access to the target resource is no longer available at the origin server and that this condition is likely to be permanent. If the origin server does not know, or has no facility to determine, whether or not the condition is permanent, the status code 404 (Not Found) ought to be used instead.
The 410 response is primarily intended to assist the task of web maintenance by notifying the recipient that the resource is intentionally unavailable and that the server owners desire that remote links to that resource be removed.
The 404 (Not Found) status code indicates that the origin server did not find a current representation for the target resource or is not willing to disclose that one exists. A 404 status code does not indicate whether this lack of representation is temporary or permanent; the 410 (Gone) status code is preferred over 404 if the origin server knows, presumably through some configurable means, that the condition is likely to be permanent.
Source Document:
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110.html#name-404-not-found