Soft 404

[corwin]

Hey forum,

My site is a Price Comparison site. Lately I've been getting some "Soft 404" errors with the Webmaster tool. I'll try to explain the steps causing it:

1. There's a valid link to a product

2. At some point the product is temporary out of stock or unavailable.

3. Google crawls this product page, getting a valid page with a message explaining this product is unavailable at this time.

4. Google see this page for few different products and (I assume) figures it's a none existing page and so it's a soft 404.

The possible solutions I see are:

1. Return real 404, I'm not a fan of this solution, because these links will very likely be valid again when the product is back in stock.

2. Live with some "soft 404" errors in the webmaster tool.

3. Find another way to explain to Google that it's not a real 404. This sounds great but I'm not sure how this can be done.

Any thoughts which would be the best method? Or maybe another solution I haven't thought of?

Thank you.

[kaushalshah]

Can't you show message "Product is out of stock for now" message. And show related product below with "You might be interested in below product"  message.

[corwin]

Thanks for the reply Kaushal. We actually don't have a system currently that lists similar products and considering we have over 20 million products, it's also not a minor thing to implement. Anyway I'm not sure I like the way other sites try to push products that aren't really what you were looking for.

[Twinbytes]

I'm not an expert in this area, but it sounds like a coding issue.  Somehow when Google looks at the page it triggers that error.  If I understand correctly, when you are out of stock, the system automatically generates a message that says it is out of stock.  What does that page look like?  Maybe if you post an example of that webpage it could be helpful.

I'm thinking you will need to modify that out of stock template so it includes other information.  Whether it be as Kaushal recommended, or even just plain text saying anything.  Maybe "Sorry we are currently out of stock, please check back later or contact us for an ETA".  Having other information on the page should show to Google it is still an active page with content on it.  One way or another, the problem sounds like it's with that out of stock template the database is using.

Maybe I'm way off, but if you link to an example page, that would probably help.

[corwin]

Thanks for the reply Daniel. Here's an example link: link

Basically anything with a wrong number will return this page. I know it's not a great page for this purpose, just a regular product page with 0 items and a message. It's just rare enough that we didn't spend too much on it. How rare? According to the Webmaster tool, out of the last 296k pages crawled, 70 were found.

Basically at this point, I have no information on this item, all I know is that someone got here so it's probably a valid product code, which is true unless someone just edited the URL manually.

[Twinbytes]

OK, from what I can see in your example link and what you just confirmed in your last note, the problem is in the design of the database search.

If a product is out of stock, instead of just saying that particular product is out of stock, it comes back with a 0 search results returned.  It's basically searching for something and takes you to a page saying that doesn't exist.  That would totally explain why you are getting soft 404 errors because you are basically searching for a page that doesn't exist.

You need your web developer to fix this so it takes you to a proper page with some sort of information rather than what is currently a nice looking soft 404 page.

[corwin]

Thanks again Daniel.

I'm a web developer too

What would a "proper page" be though? Keep in mind at this point I don't know anything about this product. Each general "out of stock" page will be the same for each product making it a "soft 404" probably, unless I make it a real 404, which will solve the "soft 404" but will create a new problem, 404 pages for some previously valid URLs.

Both are not good, I'm aware of it, however, we are talking less than 0.05% of the site's pages.

[Twinbytes]

This is where it goes a bit over my head as a programer, which I'm not, but we would need to dive into the code a bit.  I'm not sure I can be of help with details, but from what I'm understanding is as follows.

I understand that if a product is in stock, it shows the page, if the product is not in stock, rather than that pages information changing to say it is no longer in stock, you get redirected to or the page changes to a new page that simply says it can't find what you are looking for.

If I'm right, you need to change the code so when a product is not found or no longer in stock, instead of pointing to this dead page returning zero, or instead of just having that page deleted (in turn being 404), have the page change content or redirect to another page saying it is no longer in stock.

I'm not sure I'm clear here, but what I'm saying is, have it direct to a page you created yourself that says you are temporarily out of stock, rather than the program automatically generating a 404 page.

I hope this helps send you in the right direction, otherwise I'm no programer so can't give you exact instructions, but maybe someone who knows e-commerce programming can help here.

[corwin]

Without getting too technical, currently the user isn't really being redirected at all, because it's a dynamic page with the results, which can be any number, in this case, 0.

I will take your advice and indeed create a custom "out of stock" page that will be returned for all these cases. Maybe it will be clearer to Google. Obviously these won't rank well, but I'm fine with it, as long as I don't get ranking penalty for the entire site, for none existing pages. Under the circumstances I guess this is the best option.

Thank you very Daniel, you've been very helpful.

[Twinbytes]

You're welcome.  I hope it all works out as you expect.