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First off, I like the way you're thinking through this - it's critical to understand that no one solution should be applied to every scenario, so here are my thoughts on what you should do: For programs no longer offered, I would leave the page up with a notification that it's discontinued plus related products ('this program is no longer offered, but here are some other programs you might like'). Your idea of having a custom 404 for discontinued products (with the same type of language) could also work. If you do 301 redirect visitors, I suggest going to the category page & also incorporating some way of letting the visitor know. You basically want to avoid confusing the visitor by taking them somewhere different than expected. For the programs temporarily on hold, do not 302 redirect them - 302s should be avoided in almost all cases. Instead, leave the page live & let the visitor know that this program is currently unavailable, with a CTA to be alerted via email as soon as it's available. Also have related products in case they need the program/service now. There's an old Moz post (that I can't find atm) where Rand explains how he dealt with this situation - I believe he had the same idea as I shared, followed by closely monitoring the traffic to the pages; then adding 301s to the very low trafficked pages & working to improve the messaging/CTA/UX of the ones still receiving traffic. I hope this helps!

After googling about it and thinking better I choose not too. I think you are absolutely right, too inconsistent.

Makes sense - I understand now. Thanks for the clarification

JStrong, Just to make sure we're all on the same page: Although Google uses the phrase "Structured Data..." I don't think they mean it in the same was as you would use, for example, Schema markup in the code. The example there is simply a meta description, which you can use for whatever purpose you like. It could be worth testing the Click-Through-Rate on meta descriptions like that (a metric you can see in Google Webmaster Tools) to decide if you want to use it, though for my money I'd bet on a description with a clear value proposition, offer, call to action, emotion, etc... that will also have their keywords bolded if they appear in the description. If you do test it out please share what the effect on CTR in the SERPs was from GWT. Just because I'm curious.

Well I don't know if anyone is interested, but I thought I'd share the outcome of my site relaunch with the new domain name and expanded content coverage. Back when I started the process, I was responding to what seemed to be an EMD penalty from Google for my domain "traveltipsthailand.com". Traffic had dropped from a peak above 500 sessions per day in July 2013 to way less than 100 sessions per day by December 2013 when I made the decision to act. I registered a new domain "www.travelnasia.com" and redesigned the site using my master branding "Asian Travel Tips", expanding the coverage from a focus on Thailand to include China, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia (which I also enjoy travelling to). I went through every single post in the site and looked hard at what to keep and what to rewrite, restructured the content and the permalinks and re-launched on 22 December 2013. Visitors bumbled along for quite a while at less than 100 sessions per day, with my site struggling to get a ranking in Google above #500 even for long-tail key phrases. At this stage I stupidly still had my old domain 301 redirecting URLs to the new domain. I stopped that in ear;y January and turned the old domain off - copping a drop of 50% in the already low visitor traffic. Using Moz Pro, I've been analysing the site every week since then, tweaking and adding new content. I noticed that my images were the first content to get ranking back on Google, quickly getting up into the top #100 and even some into the top #10. This was promising, so I went back into my posts and started adding lots more images in the body content (I had tended to rely on image slider galleries up till then). Over the past 7-8 months I've been able to see my Google rankings climbing to the point where content pages started ranking in the top #10, even on some competitive key phrases. I now have 20 key phrases ranking top #3, 51 more in the top #10, 70 more in the top #50 and 240 more outside top #50. Since early September I've started to see this reflected in Google search impressions and organic search traffic, with visitors from Google jumping from just over 200 a week to almost 800 a week in November 2014. Overall, site visitors are now up to 3500 unique per month in November 2014 and up almost 50% from October. Nowhere near the "glory days" of July 2013, but I guess you can argue that I might have been basking in the glow of EMD advantage at that time and it would never have lasted. So was it worth it? Yes, absolutely. It forced me to change the focus of the site, it forced me to work hard on my social media profiles, it forced me to review all the content and start adding more content. It forced me to rebuild my audience and be more thoughtful about it.

OMG! Yes, I see now, I was doing this: header("Location: $goto "); and I need to do something like this: header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); header("Location: $goto"); What a dunce...Thanks so much!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQZY7EmjbMA - Here is a video on how duplicate content is handled by Google. Here are my thoughts, it would be better for you because the searcher who types in the specific make and model in your inventory will be able to find it quickly, as opposed to having to click through a site. Theoretically, that is the benefit. It could also be that pages don't rank because all of the content is viewed as duplicate. I would make the decision based on what is best for the searcher, which would be to have an organic SERP with exactly what they are looking for.

Thanks Cyrus.  Very good points!

It sounds like you need a pattern redirect implemented, ideally in one 301. If that's not possible, I would definitely add another to get all the URLs redirected to their new location (avoiding any redirect loop) - better to lose 10-20% of link equity than all! Plus you said the old pages rank well - changing domains already almost guarantees a drop in rankings, even with 301s implemented. You absolutely need the 301redirects! As a last resort, have them 301 to the new location of each page's category. Make sure you test whatever solution you go with on a few pages before pushing across entire categories. Hope this helps!

Monica, I'm going to open a new thread to ask a similar question, as I think I didn't ask it very well. Thanks for your input, Ted

Thank you everyone for your input. We will try some of these ideas and let you know what works!

I found no examples, sorry... I don't understand your comment about rel=canonical.  There should be ONLY ONE rel=canonical, and it should reference its own page, EXCEPT in the rare case I outlined above where the content on two different country pages is essentially identical.

I think that over the past few weeks search traffic itself has declined a little, that is what I meant. I don't think the age will matter. It will help in the users eyes to show longevity. I have reviews from 1999 on my site

Hi , a sitemap can contain 50.000 urls with a max. size  of 10 MB. a sitemap generator + split tool: http://www.microsystools.com/products/sitemap-generator/help/xml-sitemaps-page-limit/ info over sitemaps: http://www.sitemaps.org/ Grtz, Leonie

Have fun.

Excellent response. Thanks Michael.

I would create a new webmaster property instead of trying to change the address of two sites. Are you setting the new site up as HTTPS? What are you doing with the old domains? I would make sure you keep the registration active on them so that no one else can buy them. Aside from refreshing content and HTML data, creating a new Webmaster property, monitoring performance and verifying that the dynamic 301s are working I can't think of anything else really.

Hi DennisSeymour, Many thanks. I agree with your assessments and have communicated these conclusions to my client. So hopefully I'll see some positive changes soon.  There's been a steady traffic decline year over year. The individual keyword tracking wasn't great a year ago, so it's difficult to say what keywords are driving the downward trend. I'll keep chipping away at the imperative tasks. Thanks again!

Well, I have client account examined here on MOZ. He's got huge duplicated content and it definitely sounds to me like it is duplicating the content from the site to Ebay. I'll post back about that, but definitly something to consider. I guess if Google has to choose beetween a site and Ebay... it is going to be tough to fight for SERPS against Ebay.

Thanks for your rseponses! Hey RobertJakobson, doesn't Google advise against having canonical and noindex on the same page? And if you setup canonicals + change of address, what would be the purpose of noindexing?