Comments on: How to handle expired product listings on your website

By: Johnson Shen

Johnson Shen — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 02:30:45 +0000

Good idea. so the probable solutions for the expired product page may be :
a. keep all these expired product in the database, and give Search engine a 200 http status code.
b. provide 404 or 410 for these expired product page
c. 301 or 302 redirect these page to a more useful page.
my quesetion for first item(a) is
how long will these expired product page be kept in database? and if the amout of expired page keep on increasing in the further time , whether it will be treated as a spammer for search engine side?

By: sundress

sundress — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 02:22:58 +0000

Good points, Patrick. I agree, the main idea is to satisfy the visitor. Keep them engaged and show them that you have more to offer than the 1 expired product.

By: Jasper

Jasper — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:54:48 +0000

Cool idea there, i especially like the â€œThis product is no longer available, below are some similar onesâ€. Great stuff!

By: Patrick Altoft

Patrick Altoft — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 17:59:19 +0000

I never recommend this, you want your expired listings to still get Google traffic.

By: Tom Beaton

Tom Beaton — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:04:56 +0000

Great advice. It seems odd that no one has thought about this and before it has become such a widespread issue.

By: Martaay

Martaay — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 17:23:17 +0000

Another tip is to dynamically insert a meta noindex tag when an expired product is being displayed.

By: Shana Albert

Shana Albert — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:23:26 +0000

Excellent advice, Patrick. That is actually what I have always done for my products on my eCommerce site. It seems to work pretty well. :)

Shana