<b>What do I do with out-of-stock product pages?</b>

<b>What do I do with out-of-stock product pages?</b>

'Q: A product is sold out. Do I 404 it, redirect it, or leave it up?'

<b>Short answer:</b> Depends on whether it's coming back — and here are the three branches.

The longer version: split by intent.

Temporarily out of stock (restocking soon): keep the URL live, keep it indexed, and add availability schema with <code>OutOfStock</code>. Surface a 'notify me' form and link to similar in-stock items. You keep the rankings warm for when inventory returns.

Gone for the season but returns yearly: same — never throw away a URL that earns links and traffic every Q4.

Discontinued forever: 301 redirect to the closest equivalent product or the parent category. Only 404 if there's genuinely no relevant replacement, because a 301 to an irrelevant page is a soft-404 trap.

Rule of thumb: redirect to relevance, not to the homepage — homepage redirects get treated as soft 404s.

Got an out-of-stock edge case? Drop it.