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SEO best practice for out of stock products in 2026

by Liam Wheeler
10 min read
Blog header image featuring the blog title, the author's name and profile photo above an animation representing organic search and out of stock products

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To delete or not to delete; it’s a question we’re asked frequently by our ecommerce search marketing clients. 

It’s a valid one too, and a common challenge for online retail stores, irrespective of industry. Ecommerce websites regularly need to remove products or collections for a variety of reasons.

These are all perfectly normal scenarios, but if poorly handled, they can have a damaging impact on both your visibility and your customer experience, creating a negative, lasting impression of your brand.

Why is removing 'out of stock' products an issue for SEO?

If a product is out of stock or has been discontinued, removing the page can seem like the obvious thing to do, but this can cause problems from an SEO perspective.

Poor user experience

Removing the page will result in any users who try to visit it hitting a 404. While a 404 is a valid status code, more often than not, the next step a user takes is to close the window and shop elsewhere. Even if you do still manage to secure a sale, 404s present an avoidable obstacle in the user journey.

Broken Links

Removing a page results in any links - whether internal or inbound (backlinks) - becoming broken, which adds to the poor user experience outlined above. You might be surprised at how frequently we’ve seen broken links within the main navigation of a website, usually caused by unpublished seasonal or outdated collections. Any links that point to removed content should be removed to avoid providing a poor user experience. These can easily be discovered using a website crawler like Sitebulb or Screaming Frog.

Loss of rankings & visibility

Unpublishing or redirecting a page will effectively remove it from search results by making it inaccessible to users, search engines and AI search platforms. 

This often leads to visibility drops for any keywords that were ranking for the removed content which, as you’d expect, can have a knock-on impact on traffic levels.

Even if the page is republished at a later date, there is no guarantee that it will re-enter the SERPs in its previous ranking position(s) or with the same level of authority. Republishing under a new URL can cause the same issues.

There’s no harm in this if the traffic is no longer relevant, but it’s something to consider carefully.

Loss of link signals

Inbound links (backlinks) play an important role in establishing the credibility and trustworthiness of a website - particularly citations from high-authority, high-relevance websites. 

It’s not uncommon for more popular products or collections to generate links and coverage across the web, whether that’s through news articles, influencer content, or organic shares (think word of mouth across social media, forums like Reddit, personal blogs and so on), especially if they've been the focus of larger-scale marketing campaigns.

Removal of the target pages would effectively flick the switch on these trust signals. This could lead to a drop in site authority, which is something we want to avoid. 

Reduced discoverability

Perhaps even more important than building trust signals, links help humans to discover your brand and products. 

In a rapidly evolving search landscape, they also increase the likelihood of your site being picked up and cited by various LLM platforms, like ChatGPT. These platforms learn from content across the web, rather than ‘crawling’ websites in a more traditional sense. Having said that, brand mentions and citations are arguably more important than links in this sense.

What are your options?

Let the page 404 - Bad for UX, not so much for SEO

It’s a common myth that 404s are bad for SEO. 404s literally mean Not Found. They serve a clear and necessary purpose by indicating that the content no longer exists. 

Let me reemphasise. 

404s are completely fine from Google’s perspective. They are not “bad” for SEO.

Of course, the counter here is the negative impact on the user journey. Then there’s the traffic and link aspects we’ve outlined.

Relevancy is so important here. If you’re not able to offer the product or a viable alternative, then serving a 404s is fine. This is your cue to review your current 404 page and make sure you’re delivering the best user experience you can. 

A quote from Google's John Mueller on 404s: Every now and then I run into folks asking whether 404s are bad for their site, and whether they need to "fix" these errors somehow for SEO. The answer is a clear no. 404s are fine. Having pages on a site that return 404 or 410 is perfectly fine with regards to SEO (and, yes, even optimizations for AI systems), even if it's hundreds of millions of pages. Returning 404 (or 410: they're essentially the same for crawlers) is the technically correct way to deal with requests to URLs that don't exist. This is the *best* way to do it. It tells crawlers that there's nothing here which they need to take into account. It's not a quality signal, it's not a SEO signal, it's not a vector or chunking signal (I'm not quite sure what folks consider under that, but if there's nothing to use on a page, there's nothing to use). It's significantly better to serve a 404 (or 410) than a 200 for a page that doesn't exist. It means any system that's looking at these URLs doesn't have to interpret their content. And, of course, if you *don't want* a system to use your site's content (it's really up to you), then just block it normally: use robots.txt, use a robots meta tag, or heck-if you really feel strongly, or if the crawler just won't listen-, cloak based on the user-agent string. The clearer you are with the intent of your site's pages, the more likely automated systems will be able to work with you to achieve that.

Keep the page live - good for SEO, frustrating for users?

Ever spent hours browsing the web for a product you’re desperately craving, only to find results dominated by retailers with zero stock? It’s incredibly frustrating.

But there’s also an argument that this is good SEO, at least from a marketer's perspective. Still visible. Still in your customers' minds. Still a small chance of a purchase, if you handle your on-page content in the right way.

Here comes the caveat.

It’s simply not viable to keep thousands of unavailable product pages live indefinitely, especially for larger ecommerce sites. 

This creates unnecessary ‘bloat’ and limits Google’s ability to crawl your site efficiently, leading to wasted crawl budget. In extreme circumstances, your crawl budget may even be reduced if Google deems your site to be littered with low-quality URLs. 

Sending traffic to products they can’t purchase, or collections pages flooded with unavailable products, makes very little sense too.

A lot here rests on whether the product is gone for good and whether you can offer a viable alternative. If the product will be available in the near future and you’re able to offer a pre-order option, that’s your best bet.

Otherwise, you’re retaining traffic without the capability to fulfill sales.

Redirected pages - a happy medium, or unhelpful for both?

Redirects are often seen as a quick fix because:

But unless you're redirecting to like-for-like content, redirects aren’t particularly helpful for either party.

Remember, when a user clicks a link to your website - internal or external - they’re expecting a certain result. Redirecting them elsewhere with no context can cause confusion and frustration, especially if the new page content fails to provide any additional clarity.

The main argument for redirecting is for retaining backlinks if the redirected content is no longer deemed relevant.

So how should you deal with out of stock products? 

It depends. Yep, sorry about that. The best solution is normally determined by a couple of things:

It’s best to assess things on a case-by-case basis, but we’ve shared recommendations for some common situations below.

Temporary stock issues

Often caused by seasonality, supply chain issues or sudden spikes in demand.

If a product or collection is temporarily out of stock:

Recommended:

Adidas out of stock product page example
This example of a permanently discontinued product from Adidas retains clear CTAs

Seasonal collections? Repurpose, don’t remove.

If your brand launches a certain range at specific times of the year, most of your customers will be familiar with this. Nobody is expecting to find a Black Friday deal in mid-February.

For seasonal collections:

Samsung’s Black Friday page is a strong example of how to combine clear messaging with a strong call to action, whilst encouraging customers to shop live offers in the meantime.

An example of a good Black Friday page design from Samsung

If a product is permanently out of stock / discontinued

If a like-for-like alternative exists

For example, alternative colour variants under separate URLs, or newer models of the original product.

OR

Personally, I would avoid redirecting to alternate variants of the same products (for example different colours); it’s better to indicate this by updating the on-page content or through featured product links.

If no suitable replacement exists

What about retaining page value?

Occasionally, there may be instances where a product has been discontinued but you want to retain its page value, for example if it has generated a large number of site links. This should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, but we’d recommend:

Remember, the experience of your customers is paramount 

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of redirecting for redirects' sake.

In general, we should only redirect if the page is genuinely relevant and matches the intent of the original search, otherwise we’ll create a frustrating experience for users.

If the user is searching for a product that we just don’t offer anymore then serving the 404 page is the correct solution. 

Of course, the risk of losing traffic feels scary, but the key thing to remember is that there’s probably very little value in it if you no longer offer the relevant product or service.

Let's grow your ecommerce revenue together

If this guide has got you thinking that you might need an extra pair of hands to support you in growing your ecommerce business, our team is ready to help. Contact us today to find out more about our ecommerce seo services and search marketing capabilities.

Written by Liam Wheeler
SEO Strategist

SEO Strategist Liam joined Evoluted in 2021, bringing extensive agency experience. He combines great technical knowledge with enthusiasm for working alongside clients to forge strong relationships with the accounts he oversees.

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