Will blank category pages automatically get updated

[BobGW]

Hello,

We've got old category pages that are blank like

domain/shoes.html  (blank white page not in menu anymore)

domain/newshoesurl.html (working URL with link in menu)

Will the blank pages be automatically deindexed and updated by Google?

[MikeRoberts]

What HTTP status response codes are they returning? If they're a 200 but providing a poor user experience then eventually they'll be deindexed or at least ranking so poorly that no one will run across them, if they 404 or 410 then they'll be deindexed eventually, and if they 500 then you likely need to fix some other things on your site. Also, are you losing any link equity by not 301ing them?

[BobGW]

Thanks Mike,

I just checked using the seobook.com tool, they're 404s

No, no link equity is lost by not 301ing them.

GWT shows no crawl errors.