A previous development of a flash based site used URLs of the form http://www.example.com/#! These URLs have been indexed by Google but I need these URLs to be removed from the search index. Reading the Google documentation, I should be generating a 404 or 410 error.
However, I can't do it on the server-side because the # and everything after it is not included in the GET request. Therefore, in my .htaccess file, there is no way to check for URLs of this form.
I can detect those URLs with the Javascript line below
window.location.hash.match('#!')
then change window.location to a URL that my .htaccess file can match and then use a RewriteRule to return a 410 error.
But will this work with the search bots and/or is there a better way?
Thanks.
