Discontinued product URLs: 301 to the closest category, or let them 404?

Say a store discontinued 300 products last quarter. The old URLs still pull a few organic clicks and some backlinks, so what do you do with them? The usual advice is to 301 everything to the closest category page, and I think that's lazy in a lot of cases. Google has said for years that redirects to pages that don't really match the old content tend to get treated like soft 404s, which means the link value ends up on a page nobody was looking for.

For products with real backlinks or search demand, I'd redirect to the closest equivalent product, even if it's a newer model. For the rest, a clean 404 or 410 is more honest and tells Search Console exactly what's gone. I'm curious how others decide, especially when the replacement is only a loose match.

I'm not sure the 404 half holds up. For a product that still gets a few clicks, a 404 isn't more honest, it just drops those visitors at a dead end and throws away the backlink. Google does say redirects to irrelevant pages can get treated as soft 404s, but that's an argument for picking a better target, not for skipping the redirect. If nothing close exists, a category page that serves the same need usually beats an error page.

Agreed, a 404 just wastes the traffic. The anchor text in the backlinks tells you where each URL should go. If it says something like "the X200 review," the linker wanted that specific model, so a category page is a weak match and a newer model is the better target. If the anchors are generic, like "best blenders," the category is the right call. Export the linking pages from your backlink tool and sort by anchor, and you'll quickly see which of the 300 deserve a targeted redirect. A few weeks later, check the Pages report for soft 404s.

I'm not sure the newer model redirect holds up. A link that says "the X200 review" usually sits on a page talking about the X200's specs and who it's for, so sending that reader to the X300 hands them different content. That's the soft 404 pattern you were worried about. I'd only point to the newer model when the specs and use case really match, and otherwise fall back to the category. Also look at the linking page itself, not just the anchor, because the surrounding context often tells you more than the anchor text does.

Spec match is a good start, but for products with search demand I'd add a simpler test: would someone who searched for the old model be happy landing on the replacement at about the same price? Specs can overlap while the price tier doesn't, and a shopper who came in at one budget usually bounces off a model that costs 40% more. A cheaper or same-tier replacement tends to pass, and a pricier one usually fails even when it's technically the better match.

Also, before you redirect anything, check whether any Shopping or PMax product still points to the old URL in your feed. Those ads will send clicks to a dead page and Merchant Center will flag it. Swap the feed to the replacement or the category first, then set up the 301.

I wouldn't make the price test a hard rule. Someone searching a discontinued model is often already comparing, and a successor that costs 40% more but covers the same use case will still convert for a good share of them. What matters more is whether the price gap buys something the old buyer actually used. A cheaper replacement that drops the feature they came for fails just as badly. The feed check applies on Microsoft Shopping too, since Merchant Center there flags dead landing pages the same way.

Agreed, the price test is more of a guide than a rule. Before anything else I'd pull a baseline: the old product's organic conversion rate over the last six months. Then you can compare it against the replacement's rate once the 301 goes live. GA4 only records the destination page, so redirected visitors just look like ordinary sessions on the new URL. Search Console's impression shift between the old and new URLs will show whether searchers followed the redirect, but the conversion rate is what tells you whether they actually stayed.

Do you have a per-product conversion baseline, or are you deciding on traffic alone?

Agreed on the baseline. Pull the top queries for the old URL in Search Console too. If most of the clicks come from the exact model number, the replacement page loses that intent even at the same price, so a drop in conversion rate might be down to the query mismatch rather than the redirect itself.

Pull that query export before the 301 goes live, not after. Once the redirect is in place, the old URL drops out of the results and stops collecting query data, so you lose the before-and-after comparison for that page. Save each old URL's queries and clicks to a sheet now.