How to tell that a folder has been deleted permanently

Question

Hello,

I have deleted a folder called forums from my website from 3 months. but in my Google Webmaster Tools it keeps saying that e.g. /forums/member.php?u=1092 is missing (404). is there any way to stop these messages and tell google that i am not going to re-upload it? is this going to affect on my SEO ranking?

I tried this code, but it's not working.

RewriteRule ^forums/(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com [301, L]

Thanks.

Answer 1

Google on Removing my own content from Google.

Answer 2

Have you tried changing the status code to 410?

410 Gone

The requested resource is no longer available at the server and no forwarding address is known. This condition is expected to be considered permanent. Clients with link editing capabilities SHOULD delete references to the Request-URI after user approval. If the server does not know, or has no facility to determine, whether or not the condition is permanent, the status code 404 (Not Found) SHOULD be used instead. This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise.

More detail available in the rfc.