301 or 302 or leave at 410
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I have a client who manages vacation rental properties and those properties get links. If an owner pulls their property off the rental market the current status given is a 410 which I instinctively want turned into a 301. The problem is, often those properties come back online with the same URL so the question is, when a 301 is turned into a 200 - has anyone noticed a significant delay in time for that page to rank?I know technically it should probably be a 410 or maybe a 302 but ... you know ... the link weight.
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Hi Dave,
301 means that the page has been moved permanently. Â I suspect the search engines take specific actions upon seeing a 301 for a short period of time.
A 410 - means that the page is gone, and gone forever. Â And a 404 means that the page is temporarily unavailable.
In your case, I think I'd want to setup a process where for 3-7 days, you return a simple 404. Â I.e. the page is temporarily unavailable. Â If during those 3-7 days, the page comes back up - start serving it per normal.
If after 3-7 days, the page is still not up, I'd serve up a custom 410 page that offers alternatives that can be clicked through to if the customer/property owner did not list again. Â If he ever DOES list again, I'd be sure to 301 to the new page, regardless of time delay.
There may also be some thought to allowing pages to display in a historical sense. Â I.e. - this is what the page you want looked like - but it's no longer available. Â Thus preserving some of the traffic, which you might find some use for.
Finally - some possible ideas for "missing pages"
- Present other properties very close to the missing property
- Communicate with your viewer what is happening. Â i.e. - the listing agent/owner removed the listing - but over XX% of properties delisted come back within 10 days! Â Please check back - would you like us to email you if this property comes back online? (collect email opportunity!)
- Present a historical page showing what the listing used to look like. (legal issues?)
- Display a 404 page - but provide other interesting information/content. Â i.e. since you know what the old page was like - you probably can figure out related/highly related content to present in it's stead.
Hope this helps
Kevin -
Followup.
I'm not sure if it's possible, will check tomorrow but if we can keep the page up with a "property no longer available" notice and a canonical to an appropriate category page and put it live if the property is re-added ... what do you think?
Not sure why I didn't think of that out of the gate.
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For more on 301s, read "301 Redirects: The Horror That Cannot Be Uncached." It's not quite true that they can't be uncached, but it's incredibly difficult to do so. From a UI standpoint, if someone has a cottage they like, and has bookmarked the URL, then one day they visit the URL and get a 301, their browser will cache that 301 for months, even if the URL comes back and starts returning a 200 with content.
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You probably don't want to be going 200 > 301 > 200 too often. Although it may work and may rank again, once you 301 by definition that's a "permanent" redirect. Especially since the property could then go off again ... 200 > 301 > 200 > 301 > 200 ... and somewhere in there, all is lost.
I would make these 302 links. First, if it's 302 long enough, the goodness will pass through the 302 anyways. I don't know if this is 90 days, 180 days or something really unexpected like 102 days ... but eventually it does pass through (same if you 302 a bad domain to your main domain, the penalties will eventually pass through.)
But a 302 would serve you as a temporary redirect, keep the juice on the referring page (unless it never comes back) and then either long term rank the original URL or pass the juice.
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