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Should you stop indexing of short lived pages?
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 In my site there will be a lot of pages that have a short life span of about a week as they are items on sale, should I nofollow the links meaning the site has a fwe hundred pages or allow indexing and have thousands but then have lots of links to pages that do not exist. I would of course if allowing indexing make sure the page links does not error and sends them to a similarly relevant page but which is best for me with the SEarch Engines? I would like to have the option of loads of links with pages of loads of content but not if it is detrimental Thanks 
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 HI Adam I like the idea of the showing related content on that page, that would be useful for the user as well as increase the speed of indexing I would guess Thank you 
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 Depending on what the pages are, I would let them get indexed so they can be ranked for any longtail keywords, then perhaps 301 redirect them to the main sale page. Or leave them up with a notice that product is no longer available but display related products. 
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 Would it be the case of product variation (color, size, date, price)? If that was the case you would implement rel="canonical" for the main page. For example: site.com/page.php remains main URL while site.com/page.php?special=january gets treated as if it was the first one. Any links you earn through that January page would count towards the core product. 
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