For a classifieds site, should we keep deleted/sold/expired ads?

[DotSlash94]

Unlike a blog, classified sites tend to sell items that eventually are no longer available, and it's almost every page on the site that works like that (except category pages for example)

We have 2 options at the moment:

• We keep the old ad urls. Note that these urls won't be linked from on the site anymore. They will technically only exist in Google's index. When someone comes through to them, they are present with a suggested replacement ad that is currently available. So 5 years from now, most of the "indexed" pages on the site that google sends traffic to will be these pages that simply tell you about another ad. Not nice, but so many classifieds are doing it like this.
• 301 the deleted/sold/expired ads to a relevant existing ad. Might have scenarios resulting in soft-404s.

Both have pro's and con's, but any further insight into the matter will be great!

[EGOL]

If I had a site like that I would eliminate the individual ad pages and have much longer-tail ad categories.  Then the category pages would each have multiple ads, most recent at the top, and expiring ads at the bottom.

That puts much more substantive content on every page of the site, more potential keyword matches per page, more ranking power per page.

[David-Kley]

I honestly see your point, and understand both sides of the dillema.

As long as the replacement ad is highly relevant, and you are already ranking well for the expired ad, you could leave it in place. Ebay is known for doing this, in which an indexed ad is left in place, and you are shown relevant ads like the expired one. This is a risk you are taking. What you don't want to happen is have your users get frustrated by constantly seeing expired ads. I'm betting most people will come to the site by searching, and not by an internal link. You don't want to be known as the company that sells ads, not products.

Morally, no its not right. You should only have an ad for an item that exist, but yes, this method does work, and often.