Soft 404 pages

hi,

i would ask what is the influence of the soft 404 and how google handle this pages ?
cause the data feeds are highly dynamic some brands get imported and other which been indexed are not any more avaliable so the webmastertool will spit soft 404 page errors.

in my case i had for exmple www.mysite.com/menswear/jackets/dawnjackets/adidas.html

now this adidas jackets are no more avaliable so when some one comes through google on my site he will land on the subcategory "dawn jackets"
www.mysite.com/menswear/jackets/dawnjackets.html

which consequences do this behavior have from googles prospect?? and how could i manage this case ideally ?

best regards

With the ever changing datafeeds there is indeed a problem with a lot of categories appearing and disappearing.

There are basicly to options redirect to a different page with some results or stay on the page and send a 404. But what to display on the later?

I actually tested using 404's results in a message from google as well, similair to the soft-404 message.

I have no idea what the best solution would be regarding google, well think the soft-404 pages are a minor problem compared to the low-quality duplicate content issues you are facing using datafeeds : affiliatefeeds.nl/other/1251-google-your-site-sucks.html

Well a solution is adressing the soft-404's and other issues :

write an article for each product category you want to display, add a module showing the product. Even if there are no products to show there is still a page.....

actually am using stable categories and i equipped evrey and all these stable categories with 400-1000 words own written content.

so i have from level 1 to levle 3 whith own content like for example:

www.mysite.com/damen.html ( stable with own content)
www.mysite.com/damen/schuhe.html ( stable with own content)
www.mysite.com/damen/schuhe/sneakers.html ( stable with own content)

the problem will start with brands and colors cause i have more than 500 brands in the site and they have no own content only some general wrote things for a produkt search machine..

example:
www.mysite.com/damen/schuhe/2-adidas.html (soft 404 error) (sold out)
or
www.mysite.com/damen/schuhe/sneakers/adidas.html (soft 404 error) (sold out)

and as i read google says , those not existing sites should return a 404 or 410 response
support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=181708

the problem is, those brands could be today a "soft 404 error" but in 2 days they are not, when Importing data!!

and if i would return 404 or 410 HTTP responce for not existing brands on my site, how could i make it whith the component?

thank u
best regards