Deleting 30,000 pages all at once - good idea or bad idea?

[Viewpoints]

We have 30,000 pages that we want to get rid of. Each product within our database has it's own page. And these particular 30,000 products are not relevant anymore. They have very little content on them and are basically the same exact page but with a few title changes.

We no longer want them weighing down our database so we are going to delete them.

My question is - should we get rid of them in smaller batches like 2,000 pages at a time, or is it better to get rid of all them in one fell swoop? Which is least likely to raise a flag to Google? Anyone have any experience with this?

[MikeRoberts]

I suppose the most important question is What will be replacing them?

You don't necessarily want 30k 404 pages appearing overnight like that and causing issues for visitors. Personally I'd say you should go through all the pages to determine what the most relevant alternative page is and then 301 redirect the old pages to the new ones. That'll be a lot of work for 30,000 pages but it would probably be the best way to save from inadvertently losing traffic, backlinks and positive link equity.

[Viewpoints]

Visitors can't actually get to these pages, so it wouldn't be an issue for them. We also have researched and have not had any traffic to any of these pages for over 2 years. So we're not worried about it from a user-facing standpoint.

We're planning on 404ing them because the likelihood of having any backlinks are as close to zero as possible. I'm just wondering if it's better to 404 them in batches or all at once.

[EGOL]

I would delete these pages as soon as possible, since you have determined that they are not of value.   It is possible that all of these pages are dead weight on your site.

Chop chop.

[Viewpoints]

This is more of a theoretical question, but if we're not getting traffic to these pages and there wasn't a way for people to get there, do we need to 301?

Adding 301's will increase the work we'll  need to do from the dev standpoint and I'm not sure if it's worth the effort. Any ideas?

[EGOL]

Sorry, I edited after you posted...  I agree... If the 301 is more work then no need to do it.

Good luck.

[MikeRoberts]

In that case, I agree with EGOL. Just drop them all.

[Viewpoints]

Not a problem. Any advice on deleting all at once or deleting in bits and pieces?

[EGOL]

I would delete all of them at once.  BAM!

[AmandaIntact]

To make it look organic for Google I would say it would depend on how large the site is. If you have a site that only has an additional 30,000 pages, then it would be really odd for half the site to be removed at once. To be safe, do a batch of say 10,000 and let it index before doing the next batch. If it seems like you've been penalized, do a smaller batch the next time.

Then again, if you are already being penalized and are desperate for a change, you are already falling out of control into the black whole of Google SERPs, then do them all at once. After all, your already doing poorly, any corrective action would be better than nothing.

Just my thoughts. There are prolly better experts here than me. lol

[xoffie]

Hi

This happened to a co. I was working with recently who deleted thousands of pages without notifying the SEO team, this led to lots of work in WMT and lots of digging around to understand where we had lost links. If you've got a load of inbound links pointing at these pages and nothing has been done 301s etc then watch your DA fall, as happened to this company. Ouch. This is what happens when Tech don't "like" marketing.