Does anyone know if there is benefit to just leaving "out of stock" pages alone on the website and not removing them?

My inventory is constantly changing, which creates a lot of "out of stock" pages. I have these pages hidden from the customer view, but google is still indexing some of them.

I'm wondering if from an SEO standpoint, would it be better to just leave them there, or would Google penalize me for having many "out of stock" pages?

I think the SEO benefit would be the site being larger in size.

Any thoughts on this?

We sometimes overwrite those with new products
Not sure if that is the best or not either,

Dave

I see no reason for them to penalize you. I keep them all. If you expect that they might come back in stock, you wouldn't want to replace them or delete them because you would lose any rank/links you might have on that particular page. I even keep products that have been discontinued. I put that ("Discontinued") as out of stock message.

I look at it like this... Even though the part is no longer available, if a "new" customer finds me and didn't know about us, it's a plus. Maybe they would still look around and find other products from you. Or in our case sometimes we can get that discontinued part through a different supplier that might still offer it.

Yes I forgot to mention we do the same on some and make sure it has related type parts shown and listed.
as Ag said if they find it and come to the site it could still be a sale saved

Dave

Suggestion: For discontinued or out of stock products, create a special Product Layout that indicates that very clearly at the top, but then immediately follows up with either the nsScript for Related Products or some other helpful suggestions. Any other details related to that product that are required in the product layout you could place down the page below the fold.

I hope this helps.