Google Analytics (301 and 404 redirects)

[AdrianH]

Hi

We recently re-designed the company website and released it about 2 weeks ago. We setup all the 301 redirects so that the old pages point to the new pages. Most pages that no longer exist on the new website we point to either the home page or a sub page.

Only a daily basis I check Google Analytics to check if there are crawl errors, and '301 redirect' any '404' crawl errors that have cropped up. But now I have a couple of pages and PDF's that no longer exist and that we won't make available again, and Google Analytics brings them up as 404 crawl errors. So the question is:

1) Should I put 301's in for the pages and PDF's that no longer exist to my download page?

OR

2) Just ignore the 404 crawl errors and let them die slowly?

Thanks

 

[NotFound]

You should either put 301s to direct them to another page or use 410

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html
10.4.11 410 Gone

The requested resource is no longer available at the server and no forwarding address is known. This condition is expected to be considered permanent. Clients with link editing capabilities SHOULD delete references to the Request-URI after user approval. If the server does not know, or has no facility to determine, whether or not the condition is permanent, the status code 404 (Not Found) SHOULD be used instead. This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise.

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. Such an event is common for limited-time, promotional services and for resources be