Duplicate content on user queries

[SFMoz]

Our website supports a unique business industry where our users will come to us to look for something very specific (a very specific product name) to find out where they can get it.  The problem that we're facing is that the products are constantly changing due to the industry.

So, for example, one month, one product might be found on our website, and the next, it might be removed completely... and then might come back again a couple months later.  All things that are completely out of our control - and we have no way of receiving any sort of warning when these things might happen.

Because of this, we're seeing a lot of duplicate content issues arise...

For Example...

Product A is not active today... so   www.mysite.com/search/productA  will return no results... Product B is also not active today... so  www.mysite.com/search/productB will also return no results.

As per Moz Analytics, these are showing up as duplicate content because both pages indicate "No results were found for {your searched term}."

Unfortunately, it's a bit difficult to return a 204 in these situations (which I don't know if a 204 would help anyway) or a 404, because, for a faster user experience, we simultaneously render different sections of the page... so in the very beginning of the page load - we start rendering the faster content (template type of content) that says "returning 200 code, we got the query successfully & we're loading the page".. the unique content results finish loading last since they take the longest.

I'm still very new to the SEO world, so would greatly appreciate any ideas or suggestions that might help with this... I'm stuck.

Thanks in advance!

[LesleyPaone]

Is it possible to leave the products and just disable the buying function for them? That is the best bet SEO wise. Then your pages keep their authority.