Changing 500's to 404's
My site was hacked about a month ago and I spent a lot of time cleaning it up. Now my site has the old "the site may be compromised" tag on it.
Even though everything has been deleted, Google still has some of the bad files in it's index. The problem is that when you click on one of the old bad links it brings up a 500 error as opposed to a 404. Google will not allow a reconsideration request to go through until all those 500's become 404's. Google really wants to see a true 404, File not Found for those URLs. With a 500 Google is uncertain if the URLs are truly gone or if there is just some sort of temporary problem with your server that is casing the 500 and they will be back once the issue is resolved.
So how exactly do I go about changing a 500 to a 404 so that I can submit a reconsideration request?
Thanks so much to anyone that replies.
Even though everything has been deleted, Google still has some of the bad files in it's index. The problem is that when you click on one of the old bad links it brings up a 500 error as opposed to a 404. Google will not allow a reconsideration request to go through until all those 500's become 404's. Google really wants to see a true 404, File not Found for those URLs. With a 500 Google is uncertain if the URLs are truly gone or if there is just some sort of temporary problem with your server that is casing the 500 and they will be back once the issue is resolved.
So how exactly do I go about changing a 500 to a 404 so that I can submit a reconsideration request?
Thanks so much to anyone that replies.
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tylerherman -
Thanks
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