Status Codes - Deleted URLs

[BeckyKey]

Hi

I have a dev team 'cleaning' their database and from what I can tell deleting old URL's - which they say are not in use.

I don't have much visibility on how our URLs are managed in the back end of the site, but my concern is these URLs should never be deleted, they should have a 301, 404 or 410.

This includes product pages no longer available and category pages - my concern is losing authority.

Am I worrying over nothing or is this a big issue?

[TimHolmes]

I can definitely see where you are coming from. Personally if it is a product which has expired I would try and 301 to a similar product, provide a 404 or if possible keep the page active with a message about the product no longer being in stock with some cross sells for similar products if it has expired.

The issue is how many of these pages are still indexed and now point to nothing if no 404 is set up. I think it is about managing user expectation when they land, would you rather they had something to action or nothing but an error.

Also why delete and not simply disable, what happens if the product comes back in stock or a trade agreement is reignited etc.

[JaredCarrizales]

Nailed it.

[BeckyKey]

Thanks for the reply!

Yes, the issue is I have no visibility & it's getting the buy in for the product URLs to be managed to provide a similar SKU to redirect to, as this would be quite manual.

The pages won't be linked from anywhere on the site now, so is this even still an issue?

I just didn't think it looked to good to Google that pages keep getting deleted?