Regarding you first question, my recommendation is to go for pure 301 redirects. This is the best thing to do from a marketing prospective: when a customer looks for a non-existing product, you suggest him another product that hopefully meets his needs.

The best way to do the 301 redirect differs from system to system. Sometimes you can automatically handle this within your e-commerce application, sometimes you can manually do it in the .htaccess file and there may be many other possibilities depending on the details of your environment.

wige: in my logic, your combination of a 404 with a built-in 301 as you suggested should not give the expected result. Is there a flaw in my logic ?

Jean-Luc

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