Deleting a Product - 301 Redirects

[collegefanshop]

SF and Users:

We've been having an increasing problem of suppliers discontinuing products, therefore, once our stock reaches zero we need to do something with these products on our websites.

For example, we currently have over 1500 products which show stock of "0" which have been discontinued and will need to be handled. We are trying to implement a process for these discontinued products. Some of these product URL's have good "age", "PR", and have been linked to throughout the web so just deleting them is not an option.

My question is...does SF have any settings on how a deleted product url is redirected? For example, a deleted product can be 301 redirected automatically to the Category Page? Anything like this?

What are SF options for a deleted product?

Thanks for your help.

Collegefanshop

[fourthkey]

Instead of adding new products as new products, if you have products that are close enough to the one that people thought they were going to (like the same team maybe one style hat instead of another), you could rename the old products as other products and then searchfit should handle all of the redirects automatically.

Fourth Key

[collegefanshop]

Fourthkey:

Thanks for the suggestion.

So if we "re-use" the Searchfit internal "ID" (or our Foreign ID) for a New Product, the old Product URL will 301 redirect to the new Product URL automatically?

That would be a good start to handle them. Let me know.

Thanks.

CollegeFanShop

[stanley@searchfit]

Fourthkey is right, if you reuse product Ids then SF will issue automatic 301 redirects...
_________________
Stanley Stanev
SearchFit Architect
www.searchfit.com
www.searchfit.us.com
www.stanev.com
www.yordanova.com

[collegefanshop]

Stan:

When reusing or changing the name of products with the same internal product ID, SF is not automatically 301 redirecting to the new URL. Both URL's are existing with dup content. Is there a setting or is something setup wrong with my server setup?

Please advise. Thank you.

CollegeFanShop

[stanley@searchfit]

Yes, I suspect you are generating without removing the previously generated pages?

Check your "Delete old files on the LOCAL server" configuration on the Settings/ConfigurePerUser/Generation screen.

If you are changing category or product names then I suggest you change that "Delete old files on the LOCAL server" to "Yes" and regenerate the entire store once. It should remove any old generated web pages that do not exist anymore.

Please let me know if that solved your problem?
_________________
Stanley Stanev
SearchFit Architect
www.searchfit.com
www.searchfit.us.com
www.stanev.com
www.yordanova.com

[collegefanshop]

Stan:

I will try this but most importantly will this 301 redirect to the new URL's?

Let me know and I'll test. Thanks.

CollegeFanShop

[stanley@searchfit]

Yes, this is important automatic SF feature for all our customers.

Any URL will auto redirect using 301 to the latest generated URL based on the entity id.

For example, go to this incorrect URL

http://www.govgroup.com/isThisReal-2218594-prd1.htm

And notice how it automatically 301 redirects to the correct one.

Try first something similar with one of your URLs...
_________________
Stanley Stanev
SearchFit Architect
www.searchfit.com
www.searchfit.us.com
www.stanev.com
www.yordanova.com

[collegefanshop]

Stan:

We've been working on the "discontinued products" issue and we've run into a few problems with how SF handles these products. Our main concern, is if the web is already linking to this product we do not want to lose the benefits of the link.

In summary we understand the following:

1. If we reuse the Foreign ID and replace the product with a very similar product, SF 301 redirects the discontinued URL to the New Product URL.
(Great feature, a minority of our products)

2. If we delete a product and do not reuse the Foreign ID (majority of our products), the Product remains active on our server with "Out of Stock" message.
(OK, but this "dilutes" or "spreads out" the value of the link to the website as these pages remain on the website. Ideally, these discontinued pages (which Foreign ID's are not reused) would be removed from the server and 301 Redirected to the Category Page.

With all this being said, is a feature available or in the works which would handle this ideally:

If a discontinued product Foreign ID is NOT used, the product can be removed from the server and 301 redirected to the Category Page. This would be ideal for SEO and non-dilution of the link juice and keep the website only hosting active products.

I think this would be very helpful to all SF members.

Please advise. Thanks.

CollegeFanShop

[stanley@searchfit]

Hello,

First of all, the 301 redirection does not work by Foreign Id, but by the internal Id of the product in our system. If you delete and recreate a product then it ALWAYS changes its internal id hence the 301 redirect should be disabled at that point.

One thing that could be happening is that you have configured the generation to not remove old generated pages, which means that even if you remove a product then its page will still exist on the web server.

With the above being said, please clarify how exactly you handle product removal and creation on your side?
_________________
Stanley Stanev
SearchFit Architect
www.searchfit.com
www.searchfit.us.com
www.stanev.com
www.yordanova.com

[collegefanshop]

Stan:

I'll do some testing with settings and get back to you by the end of next week.

Thanks for your help.

CollegeFanShop

[stanley@searchfit]

I was thinking about your suggestion for redirecting to category page on missing inactive product and I liked it a lot. I will push the development for the following enhancement with the pending release:

- NEW: Enhanced the SEO capabilities of the system for inactive products. If the store owner inactivates a product or excludes it from a customized store without deleting it then the system will issue automatic HTTP 301 Redirects to the product's category web page when visitors or search engines request the missing web page of the product. This allows the store owner to automatically redirect to the corresponding categories all requests that have been made for discontinued products.

Enjoy,
Stan
_________________
Stanley Stanev
SearchFit Architect
www.searchfit.com
www.searchfit.us.com
www.stanev.com
www.yordanova.com

[collegefanshop]

Stan:

This will be a great feature for SEO. Keeping the websites "tight" and letting the established "link juice" flow back to the categories and subsequently flowing to the product pages.

Thanks.

CollegeFanShop

[collegefanshop]

Stan:

Not to pile on, but... as part of this feature, will there be a way to mark products as "inactive" by import via Foreign ID? instead of manually clicking the disable checkbox for each product?

If not, is there a workaround to make discontinued products "inactive" or not part of the customized store via import?

Thanks.

CollegeFanShop

[stanley@searchfit]

If your store is customized then you can go to Products/ChooseProducts and then click on the "Import" link. Notice that you can specify the "Customization Type" as "Deselect Products" or "Select Products" while performing an import...
_________________
Stanley Stanev
SearchFit Architect
www.searchfit.com
www.searchfit.us.com
www.stanev.com
www.yordanova.com

[collegefanshop]

Stan:

We just tested the 301 Redirect to the Category Page for discontinued (inactive) products....and it works PERFECTLY.

Thanks for your help in the matter. A great SEO feature!

CollegeFanShop

[stanley@searchfit]

Thanks for suggesting it!
_________________
Stanley Stanev
SearchFit Architect
www.searchfit.com
www.searchfit.us.com
www.stanev.com
www.yordanova.com