Out of stock products impact search visibility. Google could decrease product page visibility when the retailer's website lists an item as 'Out of Stock.' John Mueller said this during the recent Google Search Central SEO office hours hangout episode.
An eCommerce store owner asked a query. 'Does out-of-stock products affect the search ranking for transactional keywords?'
How Out Of Stock Products Impact Search Visibility?
Mueller claims that it is possible that Google could decrease the visibility of pages that have stocks items.
However, it doesn't need to be the case. Check out his complete answer in the following section.
Google Treats Out Of Stock Products As Soft 404s
Mueller hasn't ruled out the possibility that out-of-stock items being reduced in visibility in search results. Google treats 'out-of-stock' items as a soft 404 error.
"Out of stock" – it's possible, and it's a little simplified version of this. I believe many aspects play into the equation concerning products as Google display products in a normal search result.
They may appear as organic shopping results. If an item is not in inventory, its a possibility that Google will not display the organic results, but I'm uncertain.
When it comes to normal results, it could happen that if there is an out-of-stock product, we will presume it's the soft 404 error and will remove the URL from the results as well.
Theoretically speaking, it could alter the search engine's visibility when something is out of inventory."
Google Will Still Show Product Page If It's Relevant
Whether Google treats the page as having a soft 404 error depends on its impact beyond the actual product.
If the page serves as a source of information about the product(like recent vehicle ads on Google), which is helpful even if the item is out-of-stock – then it's likely to be visible in the search results.
Mueller continues:
"It isn't necessary to be the situation. Particularly, suppose you have plenty of information about the product you already posted on these pages. In that case, the page might still be relevant to people looking for a particular product. Therefore, it's not the case that something is out of availability, and Google removes that from the search."
Finally, Mueller adds – that when a product is out of stock the other website rankings are not affected.
"The second aspect to keep in mind is that even if an item is out of stock, the rankings on the site won't get affected. Even if we decided to remove one particular product since we think it's an unintentional 404 page for those searching for other products available on the site, we'd show them typically. There wouldn't be any negative effect on other website areas."