Hi,

In HTTP parlance "404 Not Found" is correct... The general specification of
it is something along the lines of "The requested resource could not be
found but may be available again in the future." For something that is
missing, and will not be coming back (e.g. somebody went out of business)
then "410 Gone" is appropriate.

If you're trying to control search engine behaviour then returning 200 with
differing content saying "this listing has expired" is probably the least
messy. 302's will probably work too (don't use 301's or the search engines
will canonicalise all the URLs to that target) but I'm pretty sure that if
your content is discoverable by search engines then sticking to 404's will
probably provide the results you need.

Cheers,
Chris.


On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 3:25 PM, Jochen Daum <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> if you imagine a membership directory  in which members regularly
> expire, but typically rejoin with the same directory url, what would
> be the correct way to handle this from a search engine perspective?
>
> I have thought of:
> - 403 error, but that doesn't indicate its temporary
> - 302 redirect to a status page, but that would be the same page
> content for all expired members
> - showing a page that "John Doe" is currently not a member, may not
> sit well with the member, as it discloses information.
>
> Any recommended implementation?
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Jochen
>
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