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.
How big is the problem: 404-errors as result of out of stock products?
-
We had a discussion about the importance of 404-errors as result of products which are out of stock. Of course this is not good, but what is the leverance in terms of importance: low-medium-high?
-
They are mostly permanently out of stock / out of collection. Based on research and your reactions we want to 301 redirect them to the relevant category page. The number of 404 errors in webmaster tools are quite substancial.
The ones which are not permanently out of stock but temporarily unavailable we want to maintain the product page with a comment that the product will be orderable soon.
-
A few questions need to be answered. Primarily:
- Are these coming back in stock?
- Were these popular products?
If these products are coming back in stock, this is a big problem and you need to have your team work to find a solution to have these pages maintain a 200. You could be losing your spot in the rankings every time you run out of inventory, missing out on a lot of traffic and cross-selling opportunities.
If the products are gone and not coming back, this isn't a big problem, as it is something every e-comm deals with. Having a plan to handle this is important though.
Some basic options include:
- Keep out of stock product pages active on web, serving up a 200. Be sure the content is updated clearly to show that the item is Out of Stock and it also serves up a bunch of additional, closely related alternative
- Let the removed products 404. Redirect these URLs to the parent subcategory level. This is possible for sites with a moderate amount of SKUs and low turnover.
- Let the removed products 404. Hand pick the popular products to set-up 301 redirects for to subcategory or similar product. Maintain by watching 404s in Google Webmaster Tools, looking for 404 pages in OSE/ahrefs, etc.
-
Are the products discontinued or out of stock? In my opinion, the 404 errors are only detrimental to your SEO when they are in an overabundance. Relevant 404 errors are important, not just for Google, but for the searcher as well. They need to know that a product has been discontinued. If a product is just out of stock, I wouldn't 404 it at all.
This is a video by Matt Cutts on how Google handles 404 errors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oya9Pl7ukNo
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
What do you do with product pages that are no longer used ? Delete/redirect to category/404 etc
We have a store with thousands of active items and thousands of sold items. Each product is unique so only one of each. All products are pinned and pushed online ... and then they sell and we have a product page for a sold item. All products are keyword researched and often can rank well for longtail keywords Would you :- 1. delete the page and let it 404 (we will get thousands) 2. See if the page has a decent PA, incoming links and traffic and if so redirect to a RELEVANT category page ? ~(again there will be thousands) 3. Re use the page for another product - for example a sold ruby ring gets replaces with ta new ruby ring and we use that same page /url for the new item. Gemma
Technical SEO | | acsilver0 -
Broken canonical link errors
Hello, Several tools I'm using are returning errors due to "broken canonical links". However, I'm not too sure why is that. Eg.
Technical SEO | | GhillC
Page URL: domain.com/page.html?xxxx
Canonical link URL: domain.com/page.html
Returns an error. Any idea why? Am I doing it wrong? Thanks,
G1 -
Sitemap error in Webmaster tools - 409 error (conflict)
Hey guys, I'm getting this weird error when I submit my sitemap to Google. It says I'm getting a 409 error in my post-sitemap.xml file (https://cleargear.com/post-sitemap.xml). But when I check it, it looks totally fine. I am using YoastSEO to generate the sitemap.xml file. Has anyone else experienced this? Is this a big deal? If so, Does anyone know how to fix? Thanks EwTswL4
Technical SEO | | Extima-Christian0 -
Find all external 404 errors/links?
Hi All, We have recently discovered a site was linking to our site but it was linking to an incorrect url, resulting in a 404 error. We had only found this by pure chance and wondered if there was a tool out there that will tell us when a site is linking to an incorrect url on our site? Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | O2C0 -
Do Abbreviations Hurt SEO Results?
We have certain products that we've abbreviated since it's a bit too long. For example, the word Fair Trade Organic is one of our categories and we abbreviate it to FTO. If I put FTO on our meta tag titles and links instead of the actual word, would that provide a weaker result?
Technical SEO | | ckroaster0 -
403 forbidden error website
Hi Mozzers, I got a question about new website from a new costumer http://www.eindexamensite.nl/. There is a 403 forbidden error on it, and I can't find what the problem is. I have checked on: http://gsitecrawler.com/tools/Server-Status.aspx
Technical SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
result:
URL=http://www.eindexamensite.nl/ **Result code: 403 (Forbidden / Forbidden)** When I delete the .htaccess from the server there is a 200 OK :-). So it is in the .htaccess. .htaccess code: ErrorDocument 404 /error.html RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^home$ / [L]
RewriteRule ^typo3$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^typo3/.$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^uploads/.$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^fileadmin/.$ - [L]
RewriteRule ^typo3conf/.$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
RewriteRule .* index.php Start rewrites for Static file caching RewriteRule ^(typo3|typo3temp|typo3conf|t3lib|tslib|fileadmin|uploads|screens|showpic.php)/ - [L]
RewriteRule ^home$ / [L] Don't pull *.xml, *.css etc. from the cache RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^..xml$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^..css$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^.*.php$ Check for Ctrl Shift reload RewriteCond %{HTTP:Pragma} !no-cache
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Cache-Control} !no-cache NO backend user is logged in. RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !be_typo_user [NC] NO frontend user is logged in. RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !nc_staticfilecache [NC] We only redirect GET requests RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} GET We only redirect URI's without query strings RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ We only redirect if a cache file actually exists RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/typo3temp/tx_ncstaticfilecache/%{HTTP_HOST}/%{REQUEST_URI}/index.html -f
RewriteRule .* typo3temp/tx_ncstaticfilecache/%{HTTP_HOST}/%{REQUEST_URI}/index.html [L] End static file caching DirectoryIndex index.html CMS is typo3. any ideas? Thanks!
Maarten0 -
403 forbidden, are these a problem?
Hi I have just run a crawl test on screaming frog and it is showing quite a few 403 forbidden status codes. We are showing none of these in webmaster tools, is this an issue?
Technical SEO | | jtay1230 -
Products with discrete URLs for each color
here is the issue. i have an ecommerce site that on a category page, shows each individual color for each product sold. and there is a distinct URL for each color. each product page shares the same content, with the only potentially differentiating factor being customer reviews (not nearly enough of these to differentiate anything). so we have URLs like: www.domain.com/product-green www.domain.com/product-yellow www.domain.com/product-red and so on. i am looking for a way to consolidate these URL while still showing all colors on the category page. the first solution i am considering is using the hash tag. so we would create www.domain.com/product#green, www.domain.com/product#yellow, www.domain.com/product#red. if possible, i would set the canonical tag as www.domain.com/product. the second solution would be to use the canonical tag and keep the URLs as is. the issue i see here is that we would need to create www.domain.com/product and show that page somewhere. www.domain.com/product would the URL that the above color URLs would canonicalize to. what would be the preferred solution? or is there something else?
Technical SEO | | rakesh_patel0