Scott, this is derected towards development.
Now once a GetSatisfaction post is deleted a 404 HTTP server response code is assigned, to the file document when it is requested by a user agent.
404 code "Not Found"
The document at the specified URI does not exist.
This is different from
410 code "Gone"
This code indicates that the requested URI no longer exists and has been permanently removed from the server.
http://eda.ee.nctu.edu.tw/~zephlin/O'Reilly/books/web/webnut/ch18_01.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes
The problem with 404 is that it can be problomatic for search engine robot, because if it comes to fetch a file and gets a 404, it does not mean the file has been premently removed, but just not found.
There can be many reasons for the file not found, it is not releven to this discussion. But the robot user agent cannot remove the refered to file with the first 404 given to it, so it comes back again and again looking for a file.
I do not know how it is it now with Google but a year ago, there were dead links galore!
A link would sit in an index for years if not from the time Google index was first build..:)
Okay, just to touch on the logic of how problematic is removing a file from its index for Google.
Let's say a Webmaster moved a file or improperly configured Apache mod rewrite. Google comes file not found, and the whole domain is out of the index.....
For this reason, SERPs, to avoid false positives recheck for file existence untill they are blue in their face!
It is better to be wrong than sorry!
So now that we identified the root of the problem, what is the solution?
Personally I do not recommend using 410 because not all SERPs will abide by the protocol because the satandards are vague and if you looking for interoperability you are barking at the moon.
Just refer to robots.txt protocol and see how variant the SERPs are even though there is an agrred 1994 standards.
So what would be the best solution?
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