Deleted products and pages now show as 404 errors: which to redirect and which to leave

A page you deleted on purpose should return "not found". Google's help for the Page indexing report says 404 responses are not necessarily a problem when a page has been removed without any replacement, and recommends fixing only the 404 errors you link to yourself or list in a sitemap. So a list of hundreds of "Not found (404)" URLs after clearing out old products is not, by itself, damage to repair. The work is to find the few removed URLs that still matter and redirect those to the closest page that exists.

What Google does with a 404

Google's page on HTTP status codes says all 4xx errors except 429 are treated the same: the URL is removed from the index if it was indexed, and Google crawls it less and less often. That includes 410 Gone. Use whichever your platform sends; there's no need to change a working 404 into a 410.

The Page indexing report help adds the part that confuses people: Google will probably keep trying the URL for some time, and there is no way to make it permanently forget a URL. That is why a deleted product can still show in the report months later, and why new entries can keep appearing weeks after you deleted the products. Google crawls them less and less often; there is nothing you need to do to clear them.

When a redirect is the right answer

Google's crawling errors guide gives the rule: if the page has moved or has a clear replacement on your site, use a 301 redirect; if you removed it and there's no similar page, return 404 or 410.

What counts as a clear replacement:

• the same product under a new URL, or a newer model of it;
• a page you merged into another page;
• an article you rewrote at a new address.

What doesn't: the home page, a random bestseller, or a category the visitor wasn't looking for. Google's site move guide warns against sending many old URLs to one irrelevant destination such as the home page, because it can confuse users and may be treated as a soft 404. So a redirect to an unrelated page may gain nothing over the 404 it replaced, and the visitor arrives somewhere they didn't ask for.

A parent category sits in between. If someone looking for "Oak bench 150 cm" lands on "Garden benches" with similar benches in stock, the category is a reasonable target. If the category is now empty or covers something else, it isn't.

Find the removed URLs that matter

A removed URL is worth a redirect when at least one of these is true:

1. It still gets visitors. In Search Console, open the Performance report, Pages tab, last 16 months, and look up the deleted URLs. Your analytics landing pages report shows visits from every source, including email and ads.
2. Other sites link to it. The Search Console Links report lists your top linked pages and can be exported. A deleted page that a supplier, a local paper or a blog links to keeps sending people.
3. You link to it. Old menu items, blog posts mentioning a product, buttons in email templates. These are the 404s Google says to fix, and the fix is to update your own link, not only to redirect.
4. It's in your sitemap. A sitemap should list only live pages. If deleted URLs are still there, your platform or plugin isn't updating it.

Put the export into a sheet and sort:

The numbers are made up; your exports fill them in. Sorted this way, a store that removed a few hundred products can see at a glance which rows have any clicks or links at all; those are the redirect list.

Don't delete products that are only out of stock

If a product will come back, keep the page live and mark it out of stock, with a back-in-stock notice if your platform offers one. The page stays available to Google and to visitors, and nobody hits an error. Delete only products you won't sell again.

On Shopify, one detail catches people: its URL redirects help says a redirect won't work if the old URL still loads a valid page. After adding a redirect, open the old URL in a private browser window to confirm it lands where you meant.

Check the 404 page itself

Two quick checks on what a missing page returns:

• Is it a real 404? Open a made-up URL on your site and check the status code in your browser's developer tools (Network tab). If an error page returns 200, Google may report it as a "Soft 404", and the troubleshooting guide asks for a real 404 or 410.
• Does it help the visitor? A search box, your main categories and a contact link turn a dead end into a next step. That doesn't change anything for Google; it helps the person who followed an old link.

What not to do

• Don't redirect every 404 to the home page to make the report look clean. Google's site move guide says such redirects may be treated as soft 404s, so the report doesn't necessarily get cleaner, and visitors land on a page they didn't want.
• Don't ask Search Console to remove deleted URLs one by one with the Removals tool. Google's Removals tool help says a removal lasts only about six months, and for permanent removal it points to the same 404 or 410 your deleted page already returns.
• Don't treat the count as a score. A store that removed 900 old products and redirected the 40 that mattered has done the job, whatever the report total says.

Finding your own broken links on a larger site

Search Console shows which URLs Google tried and couldn't find, but not always which of your pages still link to them. On a small site, searching your menus and recent posts is enough. On a larger one, a crawler lists them: Semrush's Site Audit reports "Broken internal links" and "Pages returning 4XX status code", per its issues list. It finds links on your own pages; it doesn't know which deleted URLs other sites link to, so the Links report and your traffic data still decide what to redirect. Without an SEO Toolkit subscription it covers 100 pages a month, per Semrush's Site Audit documentation.