404 soft errors - webmaster tools

[LianneF]

Hi
In google webmaster tools I have lots of pages that have come back as soft 404 errors / 404 like content - these are products that we no longer stock and aren't on the website but these pages still seem to exist even though I have deleted them. I think a previous web developer set it up so that it says 'sorry this product is out of stock, please use our gift finder' We don't really have similar products that we can re-direct customers to and worry that as we will get even more of these pages over time that it may effect our rankings. When you delete a product, shouldn't it completely disappear like it was never there? as on my site, they all seem to be there if you type in old url's? I am happy to pm some of the urls if someone has 5 mins to take a look to see if these pages are setup correctly.
Thanks
Lianne

 

[VinceSamios]

I always advise people to never delete products, and instead simply list them as "out of stock"

Tactically if I had to delete products, and I couldn't 301 them to a new relevant product, I'd 301 to the homepage or the relevant category.

 

[lulu1979]

They should eventually disappear. Make sure there is no link to the deleted product url, internal or external
How long ago have you deleted them?

 

[LianneF]

a lot have been out of stock over a year. Some seem to be still in googles index as I notice people clicking on them. Our xml sitemap hasn't been setup correctly so not sure if a lot of these urls have come from that but this is being sorted soon.

 

[lulu1979]

year is long time, they could be in your sitemap what you submitted to google? then dont be surprised
if you can see clicks then they must have links pointing to them

 

[Deleted member 61074]

Personally I get fed up when I search for stuff and find a page where it is out of stock. For me best practice is to do a 301 permanent redirect for each deleted page or reuse the page name.

 

[fisicx]

Our xml sitemap hasn't been setup correctly so not sure if a lot of these urls have come from that but this is being sorted soon.

Delete it today. A bad sitemap will hurt your ranking is so many ways. If you have good internal linking on the site you don't need a sitemap. Delete, remove, expunge the thing right now.

 

[LianneF]

Deleting it does seem abit scary but google does pick up new products we list pretty much straight away. Ok I will go for it!

 

[LianneF]

also in webmaster tools, it shows about 300 items with duplicate title tag and meta description. and when you click on one it shows two different urls for the same product. This is where I have changed the title and thus the url changes. One doesn't seem to forward to the other but both work like they are separate. Would this have any effect on rankings?
Thanks
Lianne

 

[lulu1979]

You dont need one at all dont worry. The spiders will find all your content without one. And clean up your google base xml file too and reupload it.

 

[fisicx]

Deleting it does seem abit scary but google does pick up new products we list pretty much straight away. Ok I will go for it!

I bet you see your ranking improve.

also in webmaster tools, it shows about 300 items with duplicate title tag and meta description. and when you click on one it shows two different urls for the same product. This is where I have changed the title and thus the url changes. One doesn't seem to forward to the other but both work like they are separate. Would this have any effect on rankings?

Yes. Google thinks you have two pages so will share gthe ranking (or ignore one of the pages)

Investigate the canonical tag, it does exactly what you want: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394

 

[LianneF]

Fisicx, should I remove the sitemap on my website too with all the text links or just the XML one for google?