Q: 'A product is permanently discontinued. 301 it or leave the page up?'

Q: 'A product is permanently discontinued. 301 it or leave the page up?'

Short answer: Leave it up if it has links or rankings; 301 only when nothing maps better.

The longer version: An electronics retailer ran a clean test on 600 discontinued SKUs. Half were 301'd to the parent category; half stayed live with an 'unavailable' banner plus 4 in-stock alternatives and the original reviews. After 90 days, the kept-live pages retained 81% of their organic traffic and fed clicks to the alternatives (12% click-through to a replacement). The 301'd group? They kept rankings for about 3 weeks, then the category page absorbed the equity but lost the specific long-tail queries entirely — net 40% traffic loss on those terms.

Rule of thumb: A discontinued page that still ranks is an asset. Redirect only when you have a genuinely equivalent replacement.

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