Should a sold-out product page return 404, redirect, or stay up?

Not quite the wording you see? Compare the look-alike landing page messages.

What it usually looks like on a store

Stores delete a product when it sells out, an app redirects every deleted product to the homepage, or the theme shows a friendly not-found message on a page that still answers with status 200. Meanwhile the feed and the sitemap keep pointing at the old URL.

What Google says

Merchant Center wants an out-of-stock product to stay on a working page that says so ("Sold out" text or a greyed-out buy button), with availability set to out_of_stock. Don't use out_of_stock to hide products that are still for sale or during maintenance; use pause or excluded_destination instead. To stop showing a product for a while, Google says not to delete it, because it takes a long time to come back. Permanently discontinued products should be removed from the product data, not left as out_of_stock. If a product's link returns a 404 (or too many redirects, 5xx, DNS or robots.txt failures), the product gets "Product page unavailable" and stops showing until Google can reach the page. For Search, removed pages with no replacement should return 404/410, moved ones should 301, and a 200 page that looks like an error is reported as a soft 404 and left out of Search. Google's docs have no rule saying sold-out pages must stay live for Search; the out-of-stock guidance comes from Merchant Center.

If the product is out of stock, you may show it with an explicit text (for example: “Sold out” or “Item not available”) or visually by using a greyed-out “Buy” button.Google, About landing page requirements

Make sure your landing page is live, and that it isn’t under construction or displaying an error, like a 404 error.Google, About landing page requirements

Note: If you need to temporarily stop accepting orders or hide a product from Google, do not delete the item. Adding an offer back after deletion will take a significant amount of time before it can show again.Google, Availability [availability]

Don’t use out_of_stock when you don't want your product to show.Google, Availability [availability]

Also seen as: "Page not found (404)", "Soft 404".

How to fix it

Based on Google's help pages, in plain language:

1. Keep temporarily out-of-stock products on a live page (HTTP 200) that clearly says "Sold out" or greys out the buy button, and set availability to out_of_stock (schema.org OutOfStock) in the feed and markup.
2. To stop showing a product that is still for sale, use pause or excluded_destination instead of out_of_stock or deleting it.
3. Remove permanently discontinued products from the product data; on the site return 404/410, or 301 to a clear replacement.
4. Don't serve a "not found" message with a 200 status (soft 404).
5. Fix the link of any product whose page returns 404, 5xx, too many redirects or is blocked, then request a website check.

What to check on your website

3 of our checks relate to out-of-stock or removed products handled incorrectly, and a problem in any one of them can be enough:

• Sold-out and removed products: Products in your sitemap still exist, product links don't bounce to the homepage, and no product page shows a "not found" message with a normal status (a soft 404).
• Pages load for visitors: Your homepage and product pages answer with a working page (no errors, no password page, no login wall).
• Availability matches the page: Offer availability is set with a valid schema.org value and agrees with what the page shows (no "in stock" markup on a sold-out page).

Requesting a review

For Product page unavailable: after fixing, you can ask for a website check (Google may take up to 12 hours; no new request in the meantime); otherwise an automatic review runs later, and errors should clear within a couple of days.

Questions

Sources

• developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/troubleshoot-crawling-errors
• support.google.com/merchants/answer/12158123
• support.google.com/merchants/answer/4752265
• support.google.com/merchants/answer/6324448
• support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203

Quotes checked against Google's pages. Listvane is an independent tool made by Great Work LLC. It isn't affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Google. Google and Google Merchant Center are trademarks of Google LLC.