Removed listings: 404, internal links or redirect?

[seo-cat]

For a classifieds web site with medium/high turnover for the various listings:

How would you deal with pages of removed listings?

a) would you be "honest" and return a 404 since the listing is not available anymore?

b) would you maintain historical data about deleted listings so that you can try and 301 redirect to a relevant search results page?

c) would you keep the page alive (maybe add a noindex meta tag?) and show links to multiple relevant search results pages in an effort to strengthen internal linking?

[KeriMorgret]

How often do people repost the same ad after they expire? Or do the ads expire? I'm thinking of Craigslist, where the ads expire after a certain number of days, and people repost the same ad. I would think you wouldn't want four copies of the same ad indexed, and especially for people to come to an expired version of the ad when there is a fresh one. Also, you'd be competing against yourself with multiple copies of the same content.

You'd need to make clear to the user that the ad could still be indexed, and give them a way to totally remove the ad. I agree with the other comment about wanting to strip out any contact information.

I don't know the best answer from a technical perspective (though I'd lean towards a), but wanted to point out some implications of other solutions.

[itrogers]

I like Vinnie's response! I would 301 all of the expired pages maybe to their lowest level category? I'm not sure how the taxonomy of your site works but once the post is deleted I'd have it 301 all of the way down to the lowest level of categorization. This will keep the URL as specific and relevant to the user and also keep your category pages indexed

[vforvinnie]

Hi,

I think from both a user and SEO perspective something along the lines of option A and B would be the best.

What if you redirected all inactive listings to a page that shows other listings from that category or related listings?  From a user perspective, if they were looking for that specific listing, showing similar or related ones could be beneficial and would lower your bounce rate.

From an SEO perspective, if any of the expired/inactive listings received any sort of links or ranked for anything you would be wasting link juice.

As I type this I am debating myself on another option, so I am going to share that too.  What if you still showed the listing (like an archive) but removed any contact information or anything else that could benefit the original poster?  This way you would still have the content page up, and wouldn't lose any link juice or pages on your site?

I think I still like the idea of a smart 404 or a redirect to a page with related listings, perhaps with a message at the top saying "listing not found, but here are some related listings".

Good luck deciding what to do,

Vinnie