Key Takeaways
- Deleting a product immediately turns every link to that URL into a broken link — in your content, in Google’s index, and on any external sites that link to it
- The right action depends on whether the product is temporarily unavailable or permanently discontinued
- Always set a redirect before deleting — Shopify does not create one automatically
- Check where the product URL appears before you delete it, not after
Removing a product from your Shopify store is a routine operation. Most merchants do it without a second thought — the product is gone, the page is gone, done.
The problem is what happens the moment you hit delete. Every link pointing to that product URL — in your blog posts, in collection descriptions, in other product cross-sell sections, in your own navigation, in Google’s index, on external sites — becomes a broken link. The page doesn’t redirect anywhere. It returns a 404.
Depending on how established the product was, this can mean dozens of broken internal links, lost ranking signals, and a confusing dead end for customers who bookmarked the page or followed a link from somewhere else.
Here’s how to handle product removal correctly.
First: Determine What “Out of Stock” Actually Means
Your next step depends on the answer to one question: is this product coming back?
Temporarily out of stock (expected to return): Don’t delete the product. Keep the page live.
Permanently discontinued: You’ll delete eventually — but how you handle it matters for SEO.
This distinction drives everything else. A product page for something you’ll restock in 6 weeks is valuable to keep. It holds its ranking, keeps its internal links intact, and is ready to convert when inventory returns. A product page for something you’ll never sell again is just a future 404 waiting to happen — but it needs to be retired correctly.
For Temporarily Out-of-Stock Products: Don’t Delete
The SEO case for keeping a temporarily out-of-stock product page live is straightforward. The page has:
- Accumulated ranking signals over time (inbound links, crawl history, indexed content)
- Customer demand that will return when stock does
- Internal links from your blog, other products, and collections pointing to it
Deleting this and re-creating it later means starting that accumulation over from zero.
What to do instead:
Mark the product as unavailable using Shopify’s inventory settings rather than deleting it. You have two options depending on how you want customers to experience it:
Option 1: Keep the page visible with an out-of-stock notice Leave the product published but set inventory to zero and disable “Continue selling when out of stock.” The page stays live and indexed. Customers see an out-of-stock message. Links don’t break.
Option 2: Hide the page temporarily Set the product to Draft status. This removes it from your storefront and stops it being indexed, but preserves the product record and all associated content. When stock returns, publish it again. Internal links that point to it will 404 while it’s in draft, so use this approach carefully if the product is heavily linked.
For most temporarily-out-of-stock scenarios, Option 1 is the safer choice — the page stays live and doesn’t break anything.
For Permanently Discontinued Products: How to Delete Correctly
When a product is genuinely gone for good, the process is:
- Check where the product URL appears
- Set up a redirect
- Update source links where practical
- Then delete
Do not reverse this order. The redirect needs to be in place before you delete, not after.
Step 1: Find Every Link to the Product URL
Before deleting, know what you’re breaking. Search your store for the product URL:
- Blog posts: Search your Shopify blog editor for the product handle (e.g.,
blue-wool-jacket) - Other product descriptions: Check products that cross-sell or relate to this one
- Collection descriptions: Check the collections the product appears in
- Pages: Check your About, FAQ, or landing pages
- Navigation menus: Check Online Store → Navigation
Also check Google Search Console — under Links → Top linked pages, you can see if external websites have linked to this product URL. If they have, the redirect becomes even more important because it preserves the authority those external links send to your store.
Step 2: Set Up the Redirect Before Deleting
Go to Online Store → Navigation → URL Redirects → Add URL redirect.
- “Redirect from”: enter the product’s URL path (e.g.,
/products/blue-wool-jacket) - “Redirect to”: enter the best destination
Choosing the right destination:
- Direct replacement product → redirect there
- Same category but no exact replacement → redirect to the parent collection
- No relevant replacement → redirect to the closest category or homepage (as a last resort)
Don’t redirect every discontinued product to your homepage. A product page about women’s wool jackets should redirect to your women’s outerwear collection, not your homepage. Topical relevance matters — a contextually relevant redirect preserves more authority than a generic one.
Important: Shopify does not automatically create a redirect when you delete a product. If you delete first, any existing links immediately return 404. Set the redirect first.
Step 3: Update Source Links in Content You Control
With the redirect in place, you’ve protected the SEO authority. But redirects add a small hop — the browser goes to the old URL, gets redirected, then goes to the new URL.
For internal links in content you control (blog posts, other product descriptions, pages), it’s worth updating the link directly to point to the new destination rather than relying on the redirect indefinitely. This is cleaner and removes the hop.
You don’t have to do this immediately — the redirect handles it — but it’s good housekeeping to clean up internal links over time.
Step 4: Delete the Product
Once the redirect is in place and you’ve updated the source links you can reach, delete the product.
After deleting, verify the redirect works: paste the old product URL into your browser and confirm it lands on the intended destination.
If You Already Deleted Without a Redirect
If you deleted a product and didn’t set up a redirect first, the links are already broken. Here’s how to recover:
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Set up the redirect now — go to URL Redirects and add it. The 404 period is already happening; end it as fast as possible. Earlier is always better.
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Check Google Search Console — under Pages → Not found (404), you’ll see if Google has already indexed the 404. Once you have the redirect in place, Google will recrawl and update. This takes days to weeks depending on your crawl frequency.
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Find and update your internal links — use your CMS search to find references to the deleted URL and update them to point directly to the correct destination rather than relying on the redirect.
The longer a 404 sits without a redirect, the more crawl budget is wasted and the more authority from any external links pointing to it is lost. Set the redirect as soon as you realize the mistake.
For Bulk Product Removals
If you’re removing many products at once — discontinuing a seasonal collection, dropping a product line, doing a catalog cleanup — the same principles apply at scale.
Prepare a redirect spreadsheet before any deletions happen. Map each product URL you’re removing to its best redirect destination. Then:
- Import the redirects via CSV (Shopify → URL Redirects → Import) before any deletions
- Delete products in batches after redirects are confirmed live
- Run a broken link scan after completion to catch anything missed
A common mistake with bulk removals is creating redirect chains — you redirect deleted Product A to Collection B, then later rename Collection B, which creates a new redirect from Collection B to Collection C. Now Product A → Collection B → Collection C is a chain. After major catalog changes, audit your redirects for chains and flatten them where possible.
The Ongoing Habit
Every time you remove a product from Shopify:
- Check whether it’s temporary or permanent
- If permanent: find where the URL appears
- Set up the redirect before deleting
- Verify the redirect works after deletion
- Update internal source links when practical
This takes 5 minutes per product and prevents a silent accumulation of broken links that drains SEO authority over months.
Relink scans your Shopify store’s products, pages, and blog posts to find broken links before they become a pattern — and suggests fixes for each one. Install free on Shopify.