How to Fix a 410 Gone Error on Your Website

A 410 Gone error means the page a visitor or search engine tried to reach has been permanently removed from your website, and you don't intend to bring it back. It's different from a 404 Not Found error, which simply means nothing exists at that address right now and could be temporary or accidental.

What a 410 Gone Error Means

When your server returns a 410 status code, it's a deliberate signal: "this content used to exist here, and it's gone for good." Search engines like Google treat this more decisively than a 404. A 410 tells crawlers to remove the page from their index faster, while a 404 may leave Google re-checking the page for weeks before giving up on it.

Common Causes of a 410 Error

You'll usually see a 410 error after one of the following:

• A page, product, or blog post was deleted on purpose and nothing was put in its place.
• A plugin or theme change removed a page or custom post type that used to be public.
• A website redesign restructured your pages and an old .htaccess rule was left behind, returning 410 for URLs that should now redirect somewhere else.
• A developer intentionally configured the page to return 410 as part of cleaning up old content.

How to Fix an Accidental 410 Error

If a 410 is showing up on a page that should still work, or should redirect somewhere, work through these steps:

1. Decide whether the page should actually exist again. If it was deleted by mistake, restore it from a backup or recreate the content.
2. If the content has permanently moved to a new URL, set up a 301 redirect instead of leaving the old URL returning 410. A 301 passes along any SEO value the old page had built up.
3. Check your site's .htaccess file for a rule that's deliberately returning 410 for that URL (it usually looks like Redirect gone /old-page) and remove or edit it if it no longer applies.
4. If you're on WordPress, check whether a redirection or SEO plugin has a rule marking the URL as "Gone," and update or delete that rule.
5. Clear your site's cache and your browser's cache after making changes, so you're not looking at an old cached response.

If you're unsure whether a missing page was deleted on purpose, check with whoever manages your website's content before restoring it. Bringing back outdated or discontinued content can sometimes cause more confusion than leaving it gone.

This fix works the same way whether your hosting account is on cPanel or DirectAdmin: in both panels you'll edit the .htaccess file through File Manager, in your site's root folder.

When to Use a 410 on Purpose

A 410 is a useful tool, not just an error to fix. If you've permanently discontinued a product, retired an old promotion page, or removed content that will never come back and has no replacement page, returning a 410 instead of a plain 404 tells Google to drop the page from its index sooner. This keeps your search results cleaner and avoids search engines repeatedly trying to re-crawl a page that's never coming back.

To set this up, you or your developer can add a rule to your site's .htaccess file. See What Is a .htaccess File and What Can You Do With It? for how that file works and how to edit it safely.