Moving public posts to private board

[Chao]

Hello there

We are planning to move some unhelpful old posts to a private board. I know the traffic for these posts will be gone. But I am a little worried that the action could generate a lot of  Google Coverage errors, which could impact the whole website SEO further. If Browsers or Search Engines access the old URLs again, what HTTP status code will respond? 

Thanks!

Chao

[RahulHa]

Hi @Chao, would you like to consider archiving instead?

@AshishKe 

[Chao]

Thanks for your reply. Yes, but I need the bulk / batch archiving feature. Because we are trying to moving hundreds thousands topics. I heard the bulk moving is not available yet. 

Chao

[RahulHa]

Bulk Archive is work-in-progress and is on it's way 😀

@AshishKe @NarendraG 

[Chao]

Great news! @RahulHa Do you have a rough timeline? like which month?

If Browsers or Search Engines access the old URLs again, but they were archived without a related link, what HTTP status code will respond? Is it 404?

Chao

[AshishKe]

@Chao  Bulk content archive is currently in active development and we are shooting for early access in Q3.  In case you archive content without a related link, and later try to access the archived content, you would see a message in Community saying that the topic was archived. 

[elbranscomb · Accepted solution]

I would guess that based on some previous archiving we did that by moving a previously Google indexed post to a private board that this will end in a 403 Forbidden error for someone clicking that result after you move it. You could check that by moving one test post and then use this Chrome extension checker - Redirect Path - to test the new url for the moved post and the returned http status code. 

If you add a rule to your Robots editor to also not attempt to index the Private board that may be useful as it's not helpful in search to find content that is permission based. We did this for our archive area and that eased some issues we had with people finding old urls in Google search for content that was moved to archive. 

If it's a lot of posts then I'd consider adding a redirect rule via the Admin/System/SEO/Redirect Rules for those existing urls to a logical other page so you get a 301 permanent redirect status code which our SEO team tell us is the most desirable outcome when removing posts. 

[Chao]

Hi @elbranscomb @AshishKe @RahulHa 

Thanks for your expertise. I think I have got the answer. And I am very looking forward to the bulk archiving feature coming in Q3.

Chao

[Chao]

Hi @AshishKe 

Since it has been Q3 now, do you have a more specific date for the early access of the bulk content archive tool? Thanks!

Chao