Out of stock products - What is best SEO-wise?

[the.rampage.rado]

Hello,

 

Many times when I search for sports goods from previous years I open up sites that list those as out of stock and they are hidden in the normal product listings. But google sees this "half-inactive" product and shows a result. I click and open this site, otherwise I would not click this result.

 

Currently I set all old collection items to available - NO and I make 301 reddirect to analog product. So after some time I lose all those results in google.

 

In your opinion what is the best config for such products?

Availability - Yes
Visibility - Search only

or should I continue to 301 to new products?

I'm even not sure that the first scenario will result to the same behaviour I described in the start. If I enable search indexation will google 'search' for some products in order to get to those hiden products that are only search-visible?

[30knees]

We do:

• Enabled: Yes
• Visibility: Nowhere
• Availabel for order: No

Like this they still show up in search engines but not in the store.

For some products I'll add a text saying this one is discontinued but check out this new one and link to the new one.

Edited March 1, 2023 by 30knees

[the.rampage.rado]

On 3/2/2023 at 12:12 AM, 30knees said:

We do:

• Enabled: Yes
• Visibility: Nowhere
• Availabel for order: No

Like this they still show up in search engines but not in the store.

For some products I'll add a text saying this one is discontinued but check out this new one and link to the new one.

I'll try your setup for few products.

What if I have 'available for order' set to Yes and I have no stock? I believe nothing changes in FO?

[the.rampage.rado]

Just tried your settings - those products are not visible in the sitemap. Why and how will then Google bot reach them?

[30knees]

That's strange. They're in my sitemap. But if they've already been indexed, does it not matter whether they're in the sitemap?

Here the settings:

[datakick]

They should not be in sitemap: https://github.com/thirtybees/sitemap/blob/c1ade8ced29c953c5dd2e19d992cbcf437628066/sitemap.php#L697

Sitemap shows only products that match both these criteria:

active = 1 AND visibility != 'none'

 

[the.rampage.rado]

@datakick - how can I achieve the same behaviour? Is it possible at all at the moment?

 

Edited March 3, 2023 by the.rampage.rado

[30knees]

@the.rampage.radoCouldn't you modify the file like this so it shows?

active = 1 AND visibility = 'none'

[the.rampage.rado]

Search only means "search in the shop". It does not mean Google search. Tried and tested this - they don't get indexed by Google.