disable an unavailable product

Good morning
On my ecommerce I have some products that are no longer available and I don't know if and when they will be available, unfortunately I need to hide them because even if I remove the photos, customers read the name and a lower price and ask for information on these products.

I tried to disable a product to see the result and fortunately I don't have a 404 error but a page appears saying: "this product is no longer available"

Is doing this operation (disabling a product) not recommended for SEO?

I could do 301 redirects but I don't think I have the necessary skills (I only manage e-commerce)
Thank you!

marcocarella1994 wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 03, 2024 10:31 pm

Is doing this operation (disabling a product) not recommended for SEO?

Correct.

Why not just put up something that says "Out of stock. No further information currently available" based on stock status? And disable the (i assume) more information contact button you have on the page based on stock status.

Joe1234 wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 04, 2024 10:31 am

marcocarella1994 wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 03, 2024 10:31 pm

Is doing this operation (disabling a product) not recommended for SEO?

Correct.

Why not just put up something that says "Out of stock. No further information currently available" based on stock status? And disable the (i assume) more information contact button you have on the page based on stock status.

Thanks for the reply
since these are handcrafted products, it very often happens that the user, in the search, searching for example for "painting" results in many unavailable products, being handicraft objects, very often the user wants exactly the ones that are not available... it would be a big deal Is it a problem for SEO to disable these products?

I really don't know much on the specifics of disabled products causing SEO issues beyond that it does from my readings.

I would suggest one of three things to you since your issue is with search results.
1/ Find an extension that will filter out sold out items (It will be a long hunt ) ,
2/ If you're handy it shouldn't be that much trouble to make that edit (find the search file/function in the model directory and on the query put something like "WHERE STATUS = 1") that should return only items in stock,
3/ Look for a theme that also manipulated the search...I have Journal 3.2 which seems to disable out of stock products within the theme/search and returns items in stock. But the items are still enabled in the shop so you can access it directly....good for SEO.