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. Using NoIndex Tag instead of 410 Gone Code on Discontinued products?

    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.

    Unsolved Using NoIndex Tag instead of 410 Gone Code on Discontinued products?

    Technical SEO
    ecommerce noindex shopify indexed urls
    2
    3
    1249
    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.
    • BakeryTech
      BakeryTech Subscriber last edited by

      Hello everyone, I am very new to SEO and I wanted to get some input & second opinions on a workaround I am planning to implement on our Shopify store. Any suggestions, thoughts, or insight you have are welcome & appreciated!

      For those who aren't aware, Shopify as a platform doesn't allow us to send a 410 Gone Code/Error under any circumstance. When you delete or archive a product/page, it becomes unavailable on the storefront. Unfortunately, the only thing Shopify natively allows me to do is set up a 301 redirect. So when we are forced to discontinue a product, customers currently get a 404 error when trying to go to that old URL.

      My planned workaround is to automatically detect when a product has been discontinued and add the NoIndex meta tag to the product page. The product page will stay up but be unavailable for purchase. I am also adjusting the LD+JSON to list the products availability as Discontinued instead of InStock/OutOfStock.
      Then I let the page sit for a few months so that crawlers have a chance to recrawl and remove the page from their indexes. I think that is how that works?
      Once 3 or 6 months have passed, I plan on archiving the product followed by setting up a 301 redirect pointing to our internal search results page. The redirect will send the to search with a query aimed towards similar products. That should prevent people with open tabs, bookmarks and direct links to that page from receiving a 404 error.

      I do have Google Search Console setup and integrated with our site, but manually telling google to remove a page obviously only impacts their index.

      Will this work the way I think it will?
      Will search engines remove the page from their indexes if I add the NoIndex meta tag after they have already been index?
      Is there a better way I should implement this?

      P.S. For those wondering why I am not disallowing the page URL to the Robots.txt, Shopify won't allow me to call collection or product data from within the template that assembles the Robots.txt. So I can't automatically add product URLs to the list.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • BakeryTech
        BakeryTech Subscriber @maribailey10 last edited by

        @maribailey10 If I could I would, but we very rarely have products similar enough to the discontinued one for that approach to make sense. Hence why I plan on sending them to a search query page.

        Occasionally, we are able to immediately replace a discontinued product with a replacement, but that rarely happens.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • maribailey10
          maribailey10 last edited by

          No just try to interlink them to other similar product and edit content accordingly

          BakeryTech 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

          • jtiernanibm

            How best to wrap anchor tags around a product tile

            anchor tags ecommerce product listing page

            Hi Say I am on a Product Listing page on ecommerce website and I have product tiles which contain images and name/price underneath them. Is it better to wrap the whole product tile (image and name/price) in an anchor tag (linking to their product page) or to wrap the image and the name/price underneath in anchor tags separately (linking to the product page) ? thanks

            On-Page Optimization | | jtiernanibm
            0
          • Asmi-Ta

            Staging website got indexed by google

            indexing crawling noindex

            Our staging website got indexed by google and now MOZ is showing all inbound links from staging site, how should i remove those links and make it no index. Note- we already added Meta NOINDEX in head tag

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Asmi-Ta
            0
          • williamhuynh

            Good to use disallow or noindex for these?

            technical seo noindex disallow

            Hello everyone, I am reaching out to seek your expert advice on a few technical SEO aspects related to my website. I highly value your expertise in this field and would greatly appreciate your insights.
            Below are the specific areas I would like to discuss: a. Double and Triple filter pages: I have identified certain URLs on my website that have a canonical tag pointing to the main /quick-ship page. These URLs are as follows: https://www.interiorsecrets.com.au/collections/lounge-chairs/quick-ship+black
            https://www.interiorsecrets.com.au/collections/lounge-chairs/quick-ship+black+fabric Considering the need to optimize my crawl budget, I would like to seek your advice on whether it would be advisable to disallow or noindex these pages. My understanding is that by disallowing or noindexing these URLs, search engines can avoid wasting resources on crawling and indexing duplicate or filtered content. I would greatly appreciate your guidance on this matter. b. Page URLs with parameters: I have noticed that some of my page URLs include parameters such as ?variant and ?limit. Although these URLs already have canonical tags in place, I would like to understand whether it is still recommended to disallow or noindex them to further conserve crawl budget. My understanding is that by doing so, search engines can prevent the unnecessary expenditure of resources on indexing redundant variations of the same content. I would be grateful for your expert opinion on this matter. Additionally, I would be delighted if you could provide any suggestions regarding internal linking strategies tailored to my website's structure and content. Any insights or recommendations you can offer would be highly valuable to me. Thank you in advance for your time and expertise in addressing these concerns. I genuinely appreciate your assistance. If you require any further information or clarification, please let me know. I look forward to hearing from you. Cheers!

            Technical SEO | | williamhuynh
            0
          • Happy-SEO

            Sitemap_index.xml = noindex,follow

            I was running a rapport with Sreaming Frog SEO Spider and i saw: (Tab) Directives > NOindex : https://compleetverkleed.nl/sitemap_index.xml/  is set on X-Robots-Tag 1 > noindex,follow Does this mean my sitemap isn't indexed? If anyone has some more tips for our website, feel free to give some suggestions 🙂 (Website is far from complete)

            Technical SEO | | Happy-SEO
            2
          • AL123al

            Is it ok to use H1 tags in breadcrumbs?

            A client has an e-commerce site and she doesn't want a page title on the products page. She has breadcrumbs though. Her website developer suggests putting the H1 on the breadcrumbs. So: products> Gifts > picture frame with h1 tags round the word "picture frame". Is this ok to do? Or is it a bad thing for SEO purposes? Thanks

            Technical SEO | | AL123al
            0
          • DonnaDuncan

            Exclude status codes in Screaming Frog

            I have a very large ecommerce site I'm trying to spider using screaming frog. Problem is I keep hanging even though I have turned off the high memory safeguard under configuration. The site has approximately 190,000 pages according to the results of a Google site: command. The site architecture is almost completely flat. Limiting the search by depth is a possiblity, but it will take quite a bit of manual labor as there are literally hundreds of directories one level below the root. There are many, many duplicate pages. I've been able to exclude some of them from being crawled using the exclude configuration parameters. There are thousands of redirects. I haven't been able to exclude those from the spider b/c they don't have a distinguishing character string in their URLs. Does anyone know how to exclude files using status codes? I know that would help. If it helps, the site is kodylighting.com. Thanks in advance for any guidance you can provide.

            Technical SEO | | DonnaDuncan
            0
          • moby123

            Lost with conical, nofollow noindex. Not sure how to use it on a dyanmic php site with multiple region select options

            I have a site with multiple regions the main page after a region is selected is login.php but the regions are defined by ?rid=11 , 12, etc. These are being picked up as duplicate content but they are all different regions. As i hired external php coders to develop most of the site I am scared to start meddling with any of the raw code and would like some advise on how to not show these as duplicate content. should i use noindex nofollow or connical? if Connical how do i set it up on the main login.php page? p.s. i am an extreme nube to seo

            Technical SEO | | moby123
            0
          • askotzko

            Do I need to add canonical link tags to pages that I promote & track w/ UTM tags?

            New to SEOmoz, loving it so far. I promote content on my site a lot and am diligent about using UTM tags to track conversions & attribute data properly. I was reading earlier about the use of link rel=canonical in the case of duplicate page content and can't find a conclusive answer whether or not I need to add the canonical tag to these pages. Do I need the canonical tag in this case? If so, can the canonical tag live in the HEAD section of the original / base page itself as well as any other URLs that call that content (that have UTM tags, etc)? Thank you.

            Technical SEO | | askotzko
            1

          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.