Discontinued product handling
The policy for permanently retired products: keep as an archive page, redirect to a genuine successor, or return 404/410 — chosen by…
EcommerceStock availability
Out-of-stock handling
How a site treats product pages when items are temporarily unavailable — keeping them live with accurate availability rather than removing or redirecting them.
In full
Google's e-commerce guidance is to keep temporarily unavailable products at 200 status with `availability: OutOfStock` in structured data, showing alternatives and restock information. Returning a soft 404, redirecting to the category, or deleting the URL destroys accumulated signals that will be needed when stock returns. Permanently discontinued products are a different case and should be handled deliberately.
Example
A seasonal item stays live all year with an out-of-stock badge, a notify-me form and links to alternatives.
Related terms
Soft 404
A URL that returns HTTP 200 while displaying content that means 'not found' or has no real content, causing search engines to treat it as…
Product detail page
The page for an individual product, carrying its description, images, price, availability, reviews and Product structured data.
Merchant listing experiences
Google result types for pages where a product can be bought directly, requiring Product markup with offer details such as price, currency…
302 redirect
A temporary redirect indicating the resource lives elsewhere for now; the original URL is expected to remain the canonical one.
Where to read more
- SEO Best Practices for Ecommerce Sites · Documentation · developers.google.com