Can we deindex removed profiles from our directory website faster without using GSC?

[JS Girard]

As part of our own SEO offering, we create pages on our own directory website. When a client contract ends, we normally stop providing these pages (please do not discuss the ethical aspects, I have no control on this).

Now, the former url are by default redirected to the relevant regional page instead of 404'd. I do not quite know what the exact specifics are or the http code returned (Technical SEO is a purely theoretical knowledge for me). A coworker recently noted that a page deactivated back in Augustwas still in Google's results under its cached form.

So, I have a few question:

1. Is this a normal delay for Google to deindex a page?
2. Could the redirections-instead-of-404+redirection situation be a cause of this? Should we move to a different way to deal with the deletion of these pages?
3. Should we just arrange to deindex these pages via the search console instead?
   • Note that SEO currently does not have access to Google Search Console, developers do... I think (how agence structure is weird, I know...)

 

[whitespark]

I would not redirect them and would specifically mark them with the 410 status code:

 

[JS Girard]

I would not redirect them and would specifically mark them with the 410 status code:

Thanks for the suggestion Darren. because I have to fight corporate inertia in a separate department, I would really appreciate answer to the other questions. If I can't tell them something like "it can take up to X months", they'll just ignore me and assume the problem will go away on its own.

After a quick investigation, I found out the system is currently set up to use 302 redirects.