Deleting Old Web Pages

[maxsun]

We are a jewelry site with thousands of items and we sell out of items regularly. Here's my problem.

We have a 404 Redirect (redirected to the Index.htm from the Apache Server). So when we pull an item (i.e., delete the web page) it redirects the user to the main page. Which is all and good!

But here's the problem. It also means we MISS real issues in the website--our logs are completely clean of all 404's--so we lose our ability to recognize problems. And with 2000+ items, you can just imagine how errors creep in.

I've been turning OFF the 404 redirect for a few days, but it means customers looking for an item get the dreaded 404 and I just sense it's not good with the search engines either.

I've thought about creating "dummy pages" and setting the headers to "NO INDEX", but I also sense Google, etc will be unhappy to be sending users to blank pages that redirect them...

I figured other people out there must be removing pages and I was wondering how they handled things.

Looking for good ideas!

Thanks, Kathleen

[cyanide]

Search engines aside, as a visitor, clicking on a link and having it divert to the home page would be enough to make me irritable. I wouldn't do that.
Just put a Sold Out notice

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