I did mean 404. When people or spiders encounter a 404 twice, they will assume the resource is Gone (although a 404 doesn't technically tell them that it is, su

I did mean 404. When people or spiders encounter a 404 twice, they will assume the resource is Gone (although a 404 doesn't technically tell them that it is, sure, sorry I didn't make that clearer: "No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.") A real 410 would obviously be even worse, but that won't usually happen by accident. When my server/app crashes and I'm working on restoring the configuration, in the meantime, it will usually show a 404. And that's bad.