I'm looking for a bulk way to take off from the Google search results over 600 old and inexisting pages?

[Alexanders]

When I search on Google site:alexanders.co.nz still showing over 900 results.

There are over 600 inexisting pages and the 404/410 errrors aren't not working.

The only way that I can think to do that is doing manually on search console using the "Removing URLs" tool but is going to take ages.

Any idea how I can take down all those zombie pages from the search results?

[jasongmcmahon]

What about creating a load of 301 redirects, from the none existent URLs to the still active ones , &/ or, updating your 404 pages to better inform users what happened to the "missing" pages. regardless Google will just stop indexing them after a short while.

[Alexanders]

Hi, Thanks for that, the problem is that those pages are really old they are generating 0 traffic so we set up a 404 error page a long time ago but Google is not going to remove those pages because without traffic there is not crawl and without a few crawls Google is not going to know that those pages don't exist anymore. They are literally zombie pages! Any idea?

[willcritchlow]

What is the business issue this is causing? Are you seeing these 404 / 410 pages appearing in actual searches?

If it's just that they remain technically indexed, I'd be tempted not to be too worried about it - they will drop out eventually.

Unfortunately, most of the ways to get pages (re-)indexed are only appropriate for real pages that you want to have remain in the index (e.g.: include in a new sitemap file and submit that) or are better for individual pages which has the same downside as removing them via search console one by one.

You can remove whole folders at a time via search console, if that would speed things up - if the removed pages are grouped neatly into folders?

Otherwise, I would probably consider prioritising the list (using data about which are getting visits or visibility in search) and removing as many as you can be bothered to work through.

Hope that helps.

[GastonRiera]

Just here to add some to Will almost complete answer:
The 'site:' often shows results that won't be displayed in Google search results and don't represent the entirely nor precisely the pages that are indexed.

I'd suggest to you:
1- If those pages are already serving 404 or 410, then wait for a little. Google won't show them in search results and eventually won't be seen in a site: search. You can check whether those URLs are being shown in searches through search console.
2- There is a script made by a webmaster that helps you using the GSC URL removal tool for a big list of URLs. Please, use it carefully and try it first within a riskless GSC property

Hope it helps.
Best luck.
Gaston