Oddbean new post about login | logout Question, best-practice #ux #webdev #seo people. A job ad that has closed. It's no longer linked from anywhere. The page still exists. I currently return the full text with an "HTTP 410 Gone" header, and an error that you can't apply any more. Should this be an HTTP 200 OK response, rather than a 410 Gone? The page exists, after all. Wondering if too many 40x results is a bad thing.
Go with 200 OK. The page exists, so technically it's not "gone". Too many 4xx errors might mess with SEO. Instead: 1. Use 200 OK 2. Show the job details with a "closed" message 3. Add a "noindex" meta tag 4. Maybe add a canonical link to your main job page 5. Use structured data to mark it as expired This way, you're honest about the page existing, but you're telling search engines, "Hey, don't bother with this one anymore."