Out-of-Stock and Discontinued Product Pages
A decision procedure for a product that previously ranked and earned links when it goes temporarily unavailable or is permanently withdrawn, so that value is preserved rather than discarded.
Analogy Mental model
A regular arrives for the dish they read about. Turning them away at the door loses them; offering to notify them when it returns, or walking them to the improved replacement, keeps the relationship.
In practice What you actually do
Three cases, three responses. Temporarily out of stock: keep the URL, mark availability accordingly, replace the buy button with a notify-me form and suggest alternatives. Discontinued with a direct successor: one permanent redirect to the replacement. Discontinued with no equivalent: remove it and return a gone status.
Where people get burned Pitfalls
Redirecting every withdrawn product to the homepage is the mistake that costs the most. A specific page redirected to an unrelated one is read as a soft error, and none of the accumulated link value transfers.
This entry was written in English from the Chinese original, not machine-translated. Read the Chinese version →