# Why are historical items that are no longer available to users still stored in the item catalog? | FAQ

> Source: https://www.recombee.com/faq/why-are-historical-items-still-stored-in-the-item-catalog

> For the complete site index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). To integrate Recombee, see the developer documentation at https://docs.recombee.com/llms.txt.

# [FAQ](https://www.recombee.com/faq)

[All->](https://www.recombee.com/faq)
[How It Works->](https://www.recombee.com/faq/how-it-works)
[Recommendations->](https://www.recombee.com/faq/recommendations)
[Personalized Search->](https://www.recombee.com/faq/personalized-search)
[Features->](https://www.recombee.com/faq/features)

[FAQ](https://www.recombee.com/faq)

[<- Back to List](https://www.recombee.com/faq)

# Why are historical items that are no longer available to users still stored in the item catalog?

Historical items are retained in the catalog because **they are essential for measuring similarity between users who interacted with those items in the past**. Even if an item is no longer active or purchasable, the interaction signal it generated remains a meaningful data point for understanding user preferences and computing user-to-user or item-to-item similarity. Removing historical items from the catalog would degrade the quality of those similarity calculations. Organizations should therefore treat catalog management as a long-term data asset strategy rather than a simple housekeeping task.

[How It Works](https://www.recombee.com/faq/how-it-works)

Haven’t Found The Information You Are Looking For?

## Recommended Topics for You