410 Gone

Client error: the problem lies with the request. Repeating it unchanged will normally fail again.

When a server should send it. When a resource was removed on purpose and will not come back: an expired offer, a deleted account, a retired API version. If you are not sure it is permanent, 404 is the safe choice.

Common causes. Expired offers, deleted accounts or retired API versions.

What to do. Remove links to it. Search engines drop a 410 page faster than a 404.

Browsers and HTTP clients. Browsers show the body. It is cacheable by default, and clients should remove links to it.

Google Search. Like every 4xx except 429, it tells Google the content does not exist: an indexed URL is removed from the index, and a new one is not processed. Crawl frequency for the URL gradually drops. Google documents 404 and 410 together and handles them the same way. Source: Google Search Central, How HTTP status codes, and network and DNS errors affect Google Search.

Caching. Cacheable by default (RFC 9110 section 15.1). With no Cache-Control or Expires header, a cache may still store it and reuse it for a heuristic period, often 10% of the time since Last-Modified, so set Cache-Control explicitly if that is not what you want.

HTTP/1.1 410 Gone
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Gone

location /example {
    return 410;
}

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^example$ - [R=410,L]

http_response_code(410);
echo 'Gone';
exit;

res.writeHead(410, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
res.end('Gone');

# in a view function
return 'Gone', 410