Question

I have quick question for you all 🙂

Let’s say we have an eshop with URL’s like type-of-product/name. Now, We have redesigned and reprogrammed our website, so now we need to redirect URL’s from old ones  products-name.htm to new ones. That is not problem

The question is – how to handle products, that are not available anymore – so they don’t have ‘new URLs’? Basically, we have three options:

1. 404 them all
2. redirect them to homepage
3. create one page “product is not available anymore” and redirect all old products to it.

Which is in your opinion best a., for users and b., for search engines?

Thank you

Answer 1

Since the products (and therefore the pages) did exist but don’t any more, you should use a 410 Gone response instead of a 404 Not Found. Combine this with a document that explains that the product is no longer available and suggests possible alternatives.