Case: catching soft-404s on 5,100 out-of-stock pages stopped an index-quality slide

Case: catching soft-404s on 5,100 out-of-stock pages stopped an index-quality slide

Out-of-stock products returned 200 with an empty template — soft 404s Google flagged as low-value, dragging the whole subfolder. SOP:

— Step 1 (analyst): pulled 'Soft 404' from the coverage report. Gate: page with no primary content + 200 status = soft 404.
— Step 2 (dev): for permanently gone items, 301 to the nearest in-stock sibling.
— Step 3 (dev): for temporarily out-of-stock, kept the page but added back-in-stock data and restock estimate. Gate: temp pages must show >100 words of real content.
— Step 4 (QA): re-tested 200 URLs for soft-404 status.

Outcome: soft-404 count 5,100 to 0 in 5 weeks. The parent subfolder's average position improved 6 spots as quality signals recovered.

Guardrail: distinguish 'gone' from 'temporarily out' — wrong call wastes equity or annoys users.

Ship gate: don't publish until all boxes are checked.