410 Gone

What’s actually happening

A URL that used to serve a page now returns 410. Unlike a 404 — which search engines treat as maybe-temporary and re-crawl for a while — a 410 tells Google the page is gone for good, so it drops from the index much faster. That's great when intentional and brutal when it isn't: a bad plugin or redirect rule emitting 410 on live URLs will silently strip them out of search. Watch for traffic to specific pages falling off a cliff with no 404 spike to explain it.

Common causes

• A page or product was intentionally retired and the CMS/app is correctly returning 410.
• A WordPress plugin (redirection, 410-for-removed, or an SEO tool) misconfigured to serve 410 on URLs that should still be live.
• A bulk redirect/cleanup rule with a too-broad pattern catching live URLs and 410ing them.
• An e-commerce platform auto-410ing out-of-stock or unpublished items that should 301 to a category or stay published.
• Server config (nginx return 410, .htaccess Redirect gone) left in place after a migration.

How to fix it

1. Confirm the status and decide if it's intendedcurl -sI https://example.com/page | head -1 to see 410. If that URL should still exist, this is a bug. If it really is retired, 410 is correct and you can leave it.
2. Find the rule emitting 410Check, in order: redirect/SEO plugin rules, .htaccess (Redirect gone or RewriteRule ... [G]), nginx (return 410 or a location block), and any app-level deletion logic. The [G] flag in mod_rewrite and the bare 'gone' keyword are the usual culprits.
3. Restore the page or switch to a 301If content moved, 301 redirect the old URL to the new one so link equity carries over. If it should be live, remove the 410 rule and confirm it returns 200 again.
4. Request re-indexing for accidental 410sOnce the URL returns 200 (or a proper 301), use Google Search Console > URL Inspection > Request Indexing to speed recovery. Resubmit the sitemap so the recrawl picks up the fix.
5. Reserve 410 for genuine permanent removalsUse 410 deliberately for spam URLs, expired campaigns, or content you never want re-crawled. For everything that moved, use 301. Don't let an automated rule decide this for you.