301 Redirects?

[Goriilla]

We have an e-commerce website with about 4500 products for sale. About 1200 of these items were not showing up in the Google PLA ads because they were $0 dollar items, so we made those products invisible.  Then Set 301 Redirects for each of the 1200 items. My question is this; we want to turn back on the 1200 items, should we delete the 301 redirects that are in place for them.? Will it hurt SEO performance by having them?

[MickEdwards]

I don't think there is a problem in removing the 301s.  You are not doing anything underhand.  The 301 is in place because for whatever reason you have decided it is better for your visitor to reach the redirected page.  There could be many valid reasons why the original pages are now valid, you aren't always to know a redirect is definitely temporary. Just in the same way you may need to amend a 301 to a new URL.

However, I would introduce the URLs back in small batches and monitor rankings and traffic.

[GPainter]

Hello,

301 redirects are meant to be a permanent redirects, Google may think you are trying to be shady and give you a penalty. I recommend a 302 redirect in future to help avoid this. You could try switching them over slowly to help avoid this if you did want to turn them off.

It will hurt your SEO the question is for how long really.

Good luck!