Proper way to 404 a page on an Ecommerce Website

[Blenny]

Hello. I am working on a website that has over 15000 products.

When one of these is no longer available - like it's discontinued or something - the page it's on 302s to a 404 page.

Example - www.greatdomain.com/awesome-widget

Awesome widget is no longer available

• www. greatdomain.com/awesome-widget

302s to

-www.greatdomain.com/404 page.

For the most part, these are not worthy of 301s because of lack of page rank/suitable LPs, but is this the correct way to handle them for search engines? I've seen varying opinions.

Thanks!

[Sean_Dawes]

Depending how customizable your platform is, you could if discontinued, 301 to next level page in the breadcrumbs. Which would be a category/sub category page

[Blenny]

Thanks Sean. I'm not too concerned about 301s in this case - any products that are worth the link would show up in webmaster tools - and search engines expect a certain number of 404s returned. I'm just wondering if this is the correct way to report the 404 error to the engines - with a 302 onto a 404 page? Temporary redirects have me scared. Thanks.

[Sean_Dawes]

I am not saying this strictly from a link juice but also from a user experience. I would much rather hit another page than hit a 404 with an image.

[NakulGoyal]

If these product goes away, do you expect them to go away forever or they may come back when they are in stock ? Are these "out of stock" scenarios or is it a gone forever scenario ?

If they are gone forever, a 301 to a category page make sense from usability perspective. If I am a blogger and I blogged about a product of yours, linking to it...I and all my users would prefer/expect the link to be working. If it's not available, out of stock message or if it's gone forever, a 301 to a category page or a plain 404 is better. Why do you have a 302 / Temporary redirect to a 404 page ? Are these really temporarily gone products or permanently gone ?

[bradkrussell]

Agree with Sean. If you were a user and searched for 'Stainless Steel Cookware Set with 4 Saucepans' and that product no longer became available, would you rather land on a 404 page or a 'Cookware Set' or 'Stainless Steel Cookware' type category page?

[Blenny]

Hi Nakul,

These products would be gone forever - like a discontinued item.

The 302 to 404 is my main concern - I agree with each of you that from a UEx perspective redirecting to relevant category pages is ideal.

Is this a standard way of setting this up on a large website (I didn't do it and it seems strange to me). Is there a better way (strictly from the SE perspective?).

Thanks.

[NakulGoyal]

PM me your website URL with example 404/302 of the discontinued products.

[Blenny]

Hi Nakul,

I appreciate your willingness to help! We actually resolved the issue with help from our developer - standard 404 page - both to viewer and bots - but we've implemented a routine to regularly search for viable redirects to eliminate as many as possible.

On a related note - pretty good post on SEOmoz blog today about this very topic - coincidence?!