WHY no 410redirects on shopify????

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

A user is struggling with managing 404 errors for discontinued products on their Shopify store. Google Search Console is flagging these errors, and the user wants to implement 410 (Gone) status codes to properly signal that products are permanently removed.

The core issue:

  • Shopify doesn’t natively support 410 redirects
  • The user is forced to choose between suboptimal solutions: requesting Google to temporarily stop crawling pages for six months, or creating irrelevant redirects to unrelated pages

The concern:
The user questions why Shopify lacks this basic SEO functionality, especially given that product turnover is common in e-commerce. They’re frustrated that the platform makes it difficult to maintain search rankings while keeping the website accurate and following SEO best practices.

Summarized with AI on November 2. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

I am going through my long list of 404 errors on google ands have realized Google wants me to do a 410 redirect for the pages of items I no longer carry. I am ok with this, except for Shopify wont allow it. Now I am faced with an impossible situation of asking Google to temporarily stop crawling pages for six months at a time, and doing improper redirects to other pages that really dont have much to do the pages I have deleted. I would think a company like Shopify would understand that products come and go and we need a way to maintain our rankings while also maintaining an accurate website.

Does anyone why shopify would make my SEO so damn difficult? Why cant we just do it the right way?

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