Moving on

[DemOnstar]

What is the best method to address the issue of Google and whatnot when moving/deleting/substituting content but keeping same domain name?
By that, I mean, if one was to wipe an entire website of all threads and content and begin again with something new, how do we tell the bots that things have changed? Otherwise won't there be links that point nothing?
Are we talking .htaccess additions? If so, what might they look like?

Thanks all. . . .

[rustyshack]

What is the best method to address the issue of Google and whatnot when moving/deleting/substituting content but keeping same domain name?
By that, I mean, if one was to wipe an entire website of all threads and content and begin again with something new, how do we tell the bots that things have changed? Otherwise won't there be links that point nothing?
Are we talking .htaccess additions? If so, what might they look like?

Thanks all. . . .

You will have to create a new site map and submit that to Google, that will give it all the new URLs, but won't necessarily de-index the old URLs. All that will happen is Google will get 404 errors until it finally flushes those URLs out of it's system. Google says they do not discount you in search results based on 404 errors. You can remove URLs manually from Google using webmaster tools but this is time consuming and not worthwhile if Google ignores them anyway. As I say, Google will eventually flush out the old ones. Trying to build .htacess rules to redirect all your old URLs is not even worth while, doing it wrong will just make things worse. You may take a slight hit in traffic at first with the change but overall it shouldn't hurt you in the long run.

[DemOnstar]

Splendid! A response after all of this time. . .

Nice work! Thanks for the re-assurance. . . .

One question.
Doesn't the software create a site map?

[Dragonsys]

Doesn't the software create a site map?

If by software you mean vBulletin, then yes. ACP -> XML Sitemap

[DemOnstar]

Cheers. . . .
That's the matter concluded. . . . :up:

[shimei]

Just be ready for much less traffic. If you change the urls and Google returns many 404 errors your site will be penalized. I had done what you are asking, and it took nearly a full year for the site to recover despite submitting a new sitemap. Google seems very reluctant to reindex an entire site, till this day after a year there are still old urls listed in Google that return a 404 error.

[DemOnstar]

This is what I had initially thought but short of changing the name of the site, there is little else to do.

Thanks. . .