Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. ECommerce: Best Practice for expired product pages

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    ECommerce: Best Practice for expired product pages

    Technical SEO
    4
    9
    3163
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • zeepartner
      zeepartner last edited by

      I'm optimizing a pet supplies site (http://www.qualipet.ch/) and have a question about the best practice for expired product pages.

      We have thousands of products and hundreds of our offers just exist for a few months. Currently, when a product is no longer available, the site just returns a 404. Now I'm wondering what a better solution could be:

      1. When a product disappears, a 301 redirect is established to the category page it in (i.e. leash would redirect to dog accessories).

      2. After a product disappers, a customized 404 page appears, listing similar products (but the server returns a 404)

      I prefer solution 1, but am afraid that having hundreds of new redirects each month might look strange. But then again, returning lots of 404s to search engines is also not the best option.

      Do you know the best practice for large ecommerce sites where they have hundreds or even thousands of products that appear/disappear on a frequent basis? What should be done with those obsolete URLs?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • KevinBudzynski
        KevinBudzynski @zeepartner last edited by

        Unfortunately manually.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Matthew_Edgar
          Matthew_Edgar @zeepartner last edited by

          Yep, on two different sites we did thousands of redirects at a time with no issues. In one case it was annual and the other it was quarterly but I don't see any reason monthly would be any different.

          Definitely post your findings after implementation or maybe even write a YouMoz post about what you find out!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Igal_Zeifman
            Igal_Zeifman @zeepartner last edited by

            Good luck 🙂

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • zeepartner
              zeepartner last edited by

              Thanks for your thoughts guys.

              @Igal@Incapsula: I like your 302 idea! That might acutally make a lot of sense for some products that are short-lived.

              @Matthew: Good to know that lots of 301s were not an issue on your sites. Are you talking about thousands of those, though?

              Most importantly, I will have to find something that can be automated and doesn't require much extra-work. I will probably go for 301s and remove those after a few months

              Remind me to post my learnings here after implementation:)

              Igal_Zeifman Matthew_Edgar 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Igal_Zeifman
                Igal_Zeifman last edited by

                (+1)  For redirect to main category page option. I did this several time, including for a very large tourism site which had a LOT of "inventory" changes (we are talking about dozens-hundreds/day) and had great results.

                One thing I would like to suggest is to look into doing 302 and removing the redirects after 2-3 month.

                The reason for this is purely practical. In our case, after just a few month, we were looking at many thousands of redirects and this is not something you want to "carry around".
                My suggestion allows you to still make use of link juice for removed pages and, at the same time, have a manageable redirect profile.

                As a safe net you can have a generic: "404 >>> 301 >>> Homepage" rule underneath.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • Matthew_Edgar
                  Matthew_Edgar last edited by

                  Hey,

                  In general, I would opt for option 1 as that would be the most scale-able solution. Whenever I've done this, I've not seen any issues with having lots of 301s appear. Given the shorter life span of those product pages you probably won't have lots of links going to those pages (or social, etc.) and I think that helps explain why I've not seen issues redirecting this many pages.

                  That being said, if you do have lots of links or social signals referencing a certain product page, that is when I'd opt for the custom page listing similar products. I've had success doing this for high-traffic product pages that have been removed as it can help maintain the sale.  In terms of the signal, it really depends. If you are still offering unique content relevant to search queries and links referencing that page, I'd deliver a status 200 (it is still a good page worthy of attention). If the content isn't all that unique, and it is more for people (to maintain the sale) as opposed to search, I would have that page deliver a status 410 (saying it is gone).

                  I hope that helps!

                  Matthew

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • zeepartner
                    zeepartner @KevinBudzynski last edited by

                    thanks Kevin, so you're also going with option 1.

                    Do you make those redirects manually, or does it run automated?

                    I should add that it's a Magento Webshop and we definitely need some automation since I am talking about hundreds of product pages.

                    KevinBudzynski 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • KevinBudzynski
                      KevinBudzynski last edited by

                      We have a customize search page for each category. When a product has been discontinued, we do a 301 redirect those pages to the category search page.

                      We use to do a 301 redirect of list similar products (by doing a search and capturing the url with the search term), but it proved to be to time-consuming as these products did not traditionally sold that well and did not bring in much traffic.

                      Not saying it's the best way, but this is what we do.

                      zeepartner 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • 1 / 1
                      • First post
                        Last post

                      Got a burning SEO question?

                      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                      Start my free trial


                      Browse Questions

                      Explore more categories

                      • Moz Tools

                        Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                      • SEO Tactics

                        Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                      • Community

                        Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                      • Digital Marketing

                        Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                      • Research & Trends

                        Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                      • Support

                        Connect on product support and feature requests.

                      • See all categories

                      Related Questions

                      • RodneyRiley

                        What's the best way to handle product filter URLs?

                        I've been researching and can't find a clear cut answer. Imagine you have a product category page e.g. domain/jeans You've a lot of options as to how to filter the results domain/jeans?=ladies,skinny,pink,10 or domain/jeans/ladies-skinny-pink-10 or domain/jeans/ladies/skinny?=pink,10 And in this how do you handle titles, breadcrumbs etc. Is the a way you prefer to handle filters and why do you do it that way? I'm trying to make my mind up as some very big names handle this differently e.g. http://www.next.co.uk/shop/gender-women-category-jeans/colour-pink-fit-skinny-size-10r VS https://www.matalan.co.uk/womens/shop-by-category/jeans?utf8=✓&[facet_filter][meta.tertiary_category][Skinny]=on&[facet_filter][variants.meta.size][Size+10]=on&[facet_filter][meta.master_colour][Midwash]=on&[facet_filter][min_current_price][gte]=6.0&[facet_filter][min_current_price][lte]=18.0&per=36&sort=

                        Technical SEO | | RodneyRiley
                        0
                      • Ham1979

                        Reviews on Product Page or Separated

                        Good Afternoon We currently have our individual product information pages set-up with a link through to a separate review page optimised for the term "Product A Reviews" I was reading about structured data and if I read correctly, the reviews should sit with the marked up product data so I was wondering whether to merge them back into one page. We have many reviews so the review pages are paginated in blocks of 25 My options are: Leave as it is, product info page and separate review page Merge the review content back in to the main page and have the pagination work on that page Include the first 25 reviews on the product info page then when user clicks through to page 2, 3 etc they're taken to the separated review page. In that way the product page would regularly get new content and we can still have a page specifically targeted for reviews. From the users point of view, they probably aren't even aware they're being taken to a separate reviews page so with that in mind as I'm typing this maybe they should be one page again

                        Technical SEO | | Ham1979
                        0
                      • I.AM.Strategist

                        Best Practice for www and non www

                        How is the best way to handle all the different variations of a website in terms of www | non www | http | https? In Google Search Console, I have all 4 versions and I have selected a preference. In Open Site Explorer I can see that the www and non www versions are treated differently with one group of links pointing to each version of the same page. This gives a different PA score. eg. http://mydomain.com DA 25 PA 35 http://www.mydomain.com DA 19 PA 21 Each version of the home page having it's only set of links and scores. Should I try and "consolidate" all the scores into one page? Should I set up redirects to my preferred version of the website? Thanks in advance

                        Technical SEO | | I.AM.Strategist
                        0
                      • vivekrathore

                        Is it good to redirect million of pages on a single page?

                        My site has 10 lakh approx. genuine urls. But due to some unidentified bugs site has created irrelevant urls 10 million approx.  Since we don’t know the origin of these non-relevant links, we want to redirect or remove all these urls. Please suggest is it good to redirect such a high number urls to home page or to throw 404 for these pages.  Or any other suggestions to solve this issue.

                        Technical SEO | | vivekrathore
                        0
                      • inlinear

                        Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?

                        Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
                        RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
                        RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html 
                        RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
                        2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
                        Holger

                        Technical SEO | | inlinear
                        0
                      • Branden_S

                        Page titles in browser not matching WP page title

                        I have an issue with a few page titles not matching the title I have In WordPress.  I have 2 pages, blog & creative gallery, that show the homepage title, which is causing duplicate title errors.  This has been going on for 5 weeks, so its not an a crawl issue.  Any ideas what could cause this? To clarify, I have the page title set in WP, and I checked "Disable PSP title format on this page/post:"...but this page is still showing the homepage title.  Is there an additional title setting for a page in WP?

                        Technical SEO | | Branden_S
                        0
                      • reidsteven75

                        How Does Google's "index" find the location of pages in the "page directory" to return?

                        This is my understanding of how Google's search works, and I am unsure about one thing in specific: Google continuously crawls websites and stores each page it finds (let's call it "page directory") Google's "page directory" is a cache so it isn't the "live" version of the page Google has separate storage called "the index" which contains all the keywords searched.  These keywords in "the index" point to the pages in the "page directory" that contain the same keywords. When someone searches a keyword, that keyword is accessed in the "index" and returns all relevant pages in the "page directory" These returned pages are given ranks based on the algorithm The one part I'm unsure of is how Google's "index" knows the location of relevant pages in the "page directory".  The keyword entries in the "index" point to the "page directory" somehow. I'm thinking each page has a url in the "page directory", and the entries in the "index" contain these urls.   Since Google's "page directory" is a cache, would the urls be the same as the live website (and would the keywords in the "index" point to these urls)? For example if webpage is found at wwww.website.com/page1, would the "page directory" store this page under that url in Google's cache? The reason I want to discuss this is to know the effects of changing a pages url by understanding how the search process works better.

                        Technical SEO | | reidsteven75
                        0
                      • gallreddy

                        What is the best URL designed for a product page?

                        Should a product page URL include the category name and subcategory name in it? Most ecommerce platforms it seems are designed to do have the category and sub-category names included in the URL followed by the product name. If that is the case and the same product is listed in more then 1 category and sub-category then will that product have 2 unique urls and as a result be treated as 2 different product pages by google?   And then since it is the same product in two places on the site won't google treat those 2 pages as having duplicate content? SO is it best to not have the category and sub-category names in the URL of a product page? And lastly, is there a preferred character limit for a URL to be less than in size? Thanks!

                        Technical SEO | | gallreddy
                        0

                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                      Start my free trial
                      Products
                      • Moz Pro
                      • Moz Local
                      • Moz API
                      • Moz Data
                      • STAT
                      • Product Updates
                      Moz Solutions
                      • SMB Solutions
                      • Agency Solutions
                      • Enterprise Solutions
                      • Digital Marketers
                      Free SEO Tools
                      • Domain Authority Checker
                      • Link Explorer
                      • Keyword Explorer
                      • Competitive Research
                      • Brand Authority Checker
                      • Local Citation Checker
                      • MozBar Extension
                      • MozCast
                      Resources
                      • Blog
                      • SEO Learning Center
                      • Help Hub
                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                      • How-to Guides
                      • Moz Academy
                      • API Docs
                      About Moz
                      • About
                      • Team
                      • Careers
                      • Contact
                      Why Moz
                      • Case Studies
                      • Testimonials
                      Get Involved
                      • Become an Affiliate
                      • MozCon
                      • Webinars
                      • Practical Marketer Series
                      • MozPod
                      Connect with us

                      Contact the Help team

                      Join our newsletter
                      Moz logo
                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                      • Accessibility
                      • Terms of Use
                      • Privacy

                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.