Introduction
If you’re a business owner, then you’re probably going to hit a snag somewhere down the road and run out of one or two products before you can produce more. This might be because the product is popular or hard to produce. Whichever the case, you might be wondering how that out-of-stock page is going to look for your e-commerce website’s search engine optimization.
Well, according to e-commerce web design professionals, you have nothing much to fret about. In this article, we’ll detail what Google does with out-of-stock products and how it will affect your search engine optimization.
Do Out of Stock Products Affect Visibility?
According to John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, out-of-stock products do affect how visible you are on search engines. Here’s what he had to say:
“Out of stock – it’s possible. That’s kind of simplified like that. I think there are multiple things that come into play when it comes to products themselves in that they can be shown as a normal search result.
They can also be shown as an organic shopping result as well. If something is out of stock, I believe the organic shopping result might not be shown – I’m not 100% sure.
And when it comes to the normal search results, it can happen that when we see that something is out of stock, we will assume it’s more like a soft 404 error where we will drop that URL from the search results as well.
Theoretically, it could affect the visibility in search if something goes out of stock.”
Source: English Google SEO office-hours from March 25, 2022
From here, we can predict that Google oftentimes drops out-of-stock products as it serves no use to the searcher. If the searcher, for example, is searching for a pair of hypoallergenic silver earrings, then why would Google show a website that doesn’t have them?
Will Out of Stock Products Still Show Up on Search Engines?
Now, that doesn’t mean your out-of-stock product page won’t rank on the search engines anymore. Mueller says that if your product page offers something more substantial such as item specifications, item instructions, and product reviews, then there’s still a chance the page will still show up. You just have to make sure the product page will be useful for searchers and readers even if it’s out of stock.
Mueller says, “It doesn’t have to be the case. In particular, if you have a lot of information about that product anyway on those pages, then that page can still be quite relevant for people who are searching for a specific product. So, it’s not necessarily that something goes out of stock, and that page disappears from search.”
Do Out of Stock Products Affect Your Overall Site?
Mueller emphasizes that while your out-of-product pages might dip in the rankings, the rest of your website won’t.
“The other thing that’s also important to note here is that even if one product goes out of stock, the rest of the site’s rankings are not affected by that.
So, even if we were to drop that one specific product because we think it’s more like a soft 404 page, then people searching for other products on the site, we would still show those normally. It’s not that there would be any kind of negative effect that swaps over into the other parts of the site.”
Source: English Google SEO office-hours from March 25, 2022
Conclusion
There are two things to take away from this exchange.
First, out-of-stock products are not the end of the world for your business. Google can still tell if your page is useful and will show it to searchers who want to learn more about the product, even if it is out of stock. Furthermore, out-of-stock pages won’t affect how well the rest of your site ranks.
Second, out-of-stock products will affect your visibility. At the end of the day, you’re a business owner whose goal is to increase visibility for your e-commerce website. Every product page that’s out of stock is a missed opportunity to rank on Google’s coveted search engine page. So, try to keep out-of-stock products at a minimum and make sure all your products have useful information.