Online retailer has old product listing
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A large online retailer in Europe used to sell a product that we sell in the US. They have not sold the product for more than a year but have not removed the item from their product listings. The price is marked down and the description says the product has been discontinued. They sell a very large number of items and have a high DA and this product listing ranks high in Google SERP.
As you can imagine, this causes significant problems for us. Potential customers are given the wrong price and are also being told that the product has been discontinued. I have sent numerous requests to the retailer asking them to delete the product from their database with no success. Is it possible to send a notice to Google requesting that this product page be de-indexed? Any other suggestions?
Best,
Christopher -
I'm sure I can outrank the page with modest effort. However, that won't solve the problem. The sale price on the page give value shoppers a false sense of the actual price, and the description that includes "discontinued" gives the impression the product is no longer in production. I need to get the page removed from their database or de-indexed from the SERPs.
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Christopher,
I am dealing with a similar issue with my company. Cody's suggestion might work, but in my case, many time the large retailer has no inbound links to the particular product, just the the power of internal linking via its domain strength making it rank high.
I don't really have a great solution other than targeting long-tail keywords that are easier to rank , and including in the Title Tags and Description something to the effect of In Stock, On Sale, etc. Then buying Ad Words to try and get attention in a similar fashion
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I'd just contact everyone that is linking to that page, tell them that the company no longer sells the product, but that you do and would love their link. If they don't have any links on that page, then go upstream from there, and try find a relevant page that does have links to it.
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