Are products silently out of stock while still advertised?

What the product availability check reads

For a store, the check reads the public product list and counts products marked unavailable. It also reads the structured data on each product page in the crawl sample and flags a page whose markup declares OutOfStock availability. The free run reads up to 20 pages and up to 40 products from the public list.

It reports two different things: a product that is fully out of stock in the list, and a page that claims OutOfStock in its markup. It does not decide whether stock is low, whether a particular variant is available, or whether the count is correct. It reads what the site publishes and compares that with the advertised state.

How to read an availability finding

A warning means the site advertises a product that it also marks as unavailable. That combination is what loses placements: a listing that says in stock while the page says sold out, or the reverse, is a mismatch. A page marked OutOfStock is not wrong by itself; it is wrong when the item is still being promoted or still appears in a feed.

A clean result means the sampled products and pages did not show an out-of-stock state when the check ran. It does not prove that stock is accurate across the catalogue, that variants are handled, or that the feed agrees with the page. Availability changes by the hour, so a single run is a snapshot.

Why stock mismatches lose placements

Availability is the most volatile catalogue field. A product that sells out between two syncs can still be advertised as in stock, and a platform that verifies the page can preemptively disapprove the item rather than warn. Persistently unavailable products are removed from listings, and the loss is quiet.

The reverse is also costly. An item marked sold out that is actually available is hidden from shoppers. Many stores mark everything out of stock while they restock, or leave a sold-out size as the default variant. Both produce a mismatch that a machine reads before a person notices.

Fix stock at the source

Where a product is truly out of stock, restock it or hide it from the catalogue until it returns. Where the page is wrong, correct the availability value in the product record so the list and the page agree. For part-stocked products, make sure the displayed default variant is one that is available.

On Shopify, availability comes from variant inventory; on WooCommerce, from the product stock status. A theme or app that hardcodes availability can drift from the record, so fix the source field. The guides availability mismatch and inaccurate availability status cover the two failure shapes.

When to use related checks

Use price check for the other volatile field, and feed check to inspect the public list both checks read. When a page advertises a product with no valid data at all, product page check shows what is missing.

For the underlying rule, availability mismatch and stock explains why the two sources disagree. If the page is also marked up wrongly, schema vs page compares the markup with the visible page.

Errors this check finds, and their fixes

• Inaccurate availability status: Why Shopify pre-orders and zero-stock products trigger inaccurate availability
• Availability mismatch: When the feed says In stock but the page says sold out (or the reverse)