Older pages 'still' indexed - how can i take em out of the SE?

hi everyone,


now, 8 month after i got the page online, google finally took me out of the box and get me indexed ..... i feared that never happens (maybe the google analytics has to do with it?)
ANYWAYS,
ever since august last year i have an old page indexed, that we took off in about november or octobre last year ....
and it is STILL there. why? googlebot comes by and reports that it encounters a 404 when trying to access that page (as shown in google sitemaps) - doesn't the bot learn? how long does it usually take?
are there any other things i can do? make a page with the old url and have some content on it that tells the user that this is past?

hope someone can enlighten me

[page is chocolateriewanders.com .... referring page is /women_in_business.html]

It will drop out eventually... but why not make use of it if Google has it indexed?

Put in it's place a page that can drive traffic to your web site. People may be clicking that link and finding the page isn't there, and then just click 'back' and never return.

Look on it as Google presenting you an opportunity to market your site, and you're not taking it.

You should never just remove/delete a page that's been available for any period of time. At the very least, you should make it send correct [permanent] redirect headers to the new page.

jharnois and binky,

thank you for your reply.
i might put actual content in there - i should have done that earlier.

however, how do i create a valid redirect header to a different/new page. if you could enlighten me, that would be great :-D .... of course i could use the search funtion of this forum as well

thank you guys again - i think i go with the route of puttign a site for that up again

Redirect options can be done in the application by sending the correct HTTP headers, or at the server level, which is what I suggest. Obviously, the exact method varies based on the application language and/or server software. If you can't find the answer, ask in the forum appropriate for the method you choose.