Remove Deleted (but indexed) Pages Through Webmaster Tools?

[JSOC]

I run a blog/directory site. Recently, I changed directory software and, as a result, Google is showing 404 Not Found crawling errors for about 750 non-existent pages.

I've had some suggest that I should implement a 301 redirect, but can't see the wisdom in this as the pages are obscure, unlikely to appear in search and they've been deleted.

Is the best course to simply manually enter each 404 error page in to the Remove Page option in Webmaster Tools? Will entering deleted pages into the Removal area hurt other healthy pages on my site?

[RyanPurkey]

The best course is to 301 redirect them which is what most (and Google) will suggest.  Even though they're obscure you'll still get a certain amount of PR/link juice from redirecting them.  If you're not worried about them lining up to contemporary pages, you could direct them all to your home page.

If you absolutely don't want to do any 301s, you can use Webmaster Tools and it won't hurt your healthy pages.  You should also consider making a custom 404 page that helps with the transition to the new software.

[SEM-Freak]

The best course of action is to 301 all of the pages as:

1. There may be some links to these pages
2. These pages may presently be carrying some authority which would be transferred to the new pages (i.e. where the 301 resolves)