A sold-out product at the top of a round-up wastes the click and costs you the reader.
Rui Correia Posted
A reader clicks through to buy something and finds it sold out. They don’t try the next option. They go back to Google, and the next time they see your name they remember the wasted click.
It’s a small failure that costs more than it looks, and it happens constantly — most on the days traffic is highest, because that’s when stock moves fastest.
What the setting does
Stock status comes back with the pricing data, refreshed every two to four hours. You choose what happens when something goes unavailable.
- Hide it — the product drops out until it's back. Cleanest for round-ups where any option will do.
- Flag it — stays visible, marked unavailable. Right when the product is the point of the article.
- Reorder — in-stock retailers move up, so the first thing a reader sees is something they can buy.
Reorder is the one most publishers want and the one least often switched on.
Which to choose
Depends what the page is for.
On a best-of round-up, hiding is usually right — the reader wants a recommendation they can act on, and an unavailable one is noise.
On a single-product review, hiding the only product would be absurd. Flag it, and if you’re showing several retailers, let the ones with stock rise.
On a deals page, reorder every time. The entire value of the page is that what’s at the top is worth having right now.
Black Friday
Worth setting before the last week of November rather than during it. Stock moves hourly, and a Black Friday round-up full of sold-out products on the busiest shopping day of the year is a bad advert for the site.
If you want to check the state of your existing product pages before then, a free audit covers link health across the site. About a minute, no account.
Common questions
What happens when a product goes out of stock?
You choose - hide it, flag it as unavailable, or reorder so in-stock retailers appear first. Stock status refreshes every two to four hours.
Which out of stock setting should I use?
Hide on round-ups, flag on single-product reviews, reorder on deals pages.