Background
I registered a domain for a new project. Shortly after launch, Google Search Console started flooding with mysterious 404 errors — URLs like /post/xxx and /category-xxx, the classic WordPress path patterns. Turns out the domain had a previous owner who ran a WordPress site, and Google still had those old pages indexed.
When search engines see 404s on old URLs, they keep retrying. Better to tell them unequivocally: "This content is gone for good" — that's what 410 Gone is for.
The Pitfall: _redirects Only Supports 3xx
My first instinct was to add rules to _redirects:
