422 vs 404 Status Codes

[AfroSEO]

We work with an automotive industry platform provider and whenever a vehicle is removed from inventory, a 404 error is returned. Being that inventory moves so quickly, we have a host of 404 errors in search console.

The fix that the platform provider proposed was to return a 422 status code vs a 404. I'm not familiar with how a 422 may impact our optimization efforts. Is this a good approach, since there is no scalable way to 301 redirect all of those dead inventory pages.

[A_Q]

A 422 is an unprocessable error, which I think will have as much impact as a 404  (page not found error).

You could make pages non indexable once a vehicle has been removed from the inventory. This shouldn't impact you SEO efforts.

[94501]

Do pages of vehicles that are in inventory for a short time actually deliver monetizable traffic?

If the answer is no, because they are up for such a short amount of time, you would have to weigh the value of having them indexable in the first place vs creating an ever-growing list of missing pages.

Having a lot of 404s or 422s is a bit of a negative. Is there really no way to add the step of 301ing to their removal?

Making the pages non-indexable via noindex once they are indexed will not remove them. You either have to 301 and/or request removal from the G's index. Is there a programmatic way to turn their removal into a 301 to the top inventory category page?

Good luck!

[MikeRoberts]

Personally I think you should set up a process whereby every time a vehicle and/or part is removed, you have someone automatically 301 it to the previous step in the site navigation. So when "blue widget 3" is removed from the site, anyone landing on that page or who has it bookmarked winds up on the "Widget" category page. Now there may not be an easy way to do it right this second because of how many there are now, but if you get in the habit of doing it and slowly work toward fixing the others then you'll be in a good position in the future to keep this from being an issue again.

Now if you really don't want to attempt that... 404s aren't necessarily horrible (too many can be). If your site is properly serving 404s then you won't be penalized for it but in this case you might want to consider using 410 status codes. Its a stronger signal for removal than a 404 and you don't plan on the product ever coming back so marking it Gone should get it removed from the index faster while also helping to keep you from competing against yourself in the SERPs when a new but similar product comes into stock.

[AfroSEO]

Thanks Mike.

Your initial solution would be preferred, but its not scalable. We are talking about over 100 websites with varying levels of inventory.

I was thinking along the lines of the keeping the 404 or 410 status. It was just odd when the vendor proposed a 422 error, when its not a preferred option in Google's support pages. I was just wondering if anyone used the 422 response code before and if so, why.