Out-of-stock products are items a shop cannot currently deliver while the product page still exists. For SEO, three things matter: whether the page stays online, how availability is stated in markup and feed, and what the page tells visitors.
What does it mean for SEO?
In structured data for merchant listings, Google accepts values such as OutOfStock, SoldOut, Discontinued, PreOrder and BackOrder for availability, and only one value may be used. The Merchant Center feed uses in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder and backorder. The stated availability has to match the page.
In April 2022, John Mueller said Google may treat an out-of-stock page like a soft 404 and drop it from search results. If the page carries a lot of information about the product, it can stay relevant. He also said that one unavailable product does not affect the rest of the site.
A backorder differs from out of stock because customers can still order and receive the item later (Lightspeed). Shops that sell on backorder should state that in markup and feed rather than marking the item as out of stock.
For products that return, many shops keep the page and show a restock note. For discontinued products, common options are a 301 redirect to a successor or category page, or a 410 status (practice, not a Google rule).
Example
"offers": {
"@type": "Offer",
"price": 89.90,
"priceCurrency": "EUR",
"availability": "https://schema.org/OutOfStock"
}
Sources
- Merchant listing structured data (availability) – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
- Product data specification, availability – Google Merchant Center Helpsupport.google.com
- Out-of-stock products may impact search visibility (John Mueller, April 4, 2022) – Search Engine Journalsearchenginejournal.com
- Backorder vs. out of stock – Lightspeed (secondary)lightspeedhq.com
Last updated: