3 replies to this topic

[sjwright]

Hi

I'm building a website for a motorcycle dealer at the moment, and have a question to ask about when a bike is no longer on the site.

With the current site, if a bike is removed and someone tries to access the URL it was on, they simply get an error 404. The new site will display something along the lines of "The bike you're looking for is now sold" instead, to make it a bit more informative.

Should this be displayed and return HTTP status 410, or should I use a 301 redirect to send the user to a 'Bike now sold page'. What's the best method where stock turn around can be quite quick? Should I be including stock's pages in the sitemap.xml too, or is it damaging to include pages where they may be removed from the site only after a few days?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I've got a site for an estate agent coming up too, so any advice on the above would have relevance for that project also.

Thanks in advance
Ste

[chrishirst]

Return a 410 response and use a "custom 410" document to tell real visitors that it is sold, and to tell search engines that the page no longer exists.

[Tiggerito]

Adding to @chrishirst I would make sure the custom 410 helped the visitor find a good alternative. E.g. suggest other similar bikes that are currently available.

The 410 solution is assuming when a product is sold it will never come back.

If you want to analyse a website that has this problem on a major scale, see what ebay do.

[sjwright]

Adding to @chrishirst I would make sure the custom 410 helped the visitor find a good alternative. E.g. suggest other similar bikes that are currently available.

The 410 solution is assuming when a product is sold it will never come back.

If you want to analyse a website that has this problem on a major scale, see what ebay do.

Nice touch, think this is worth looking at. Will check out ebay now to see the http status, good tip :-)

As to the sitemap, should I be putting stock in them, or should I just add as far as a stock bike's parent? Thanks for your help fellas, muchos appreciatos!