404 code/header for search engines, on removed user content?

Posted by mowgli on Pro Webmasters See other posts from Pro Webmasters or by mowgli
Published on 2014-08-19T21:27:03Z Indexed on 2014/08/19 22:34 UTC
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Filed under:

seo

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google

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google-search

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search-engines

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googlebot

I just got an email, from a former user on my website

He was complaining that Google still shows the contact page he created on my site, even though he deleted it a month ago

This is the first time in many years anyone requests this

I told him, that it's almost entirely up to Google what content it wants to keep/show and for how long. If it's deleted on the site, I can't do much, other than request a re-visit from the googlebot

The user-page already now says something like "Not found. The user has removed the content"

TL;DR:

But the question is: Should I generally add a 404 header (or other) for dynamic user content that has been removed from the site? Or could this hurt the site (SEO)?

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