Out of Stock products in sitemap causing 404 errors

Hello,

Because we deal with used books, we have a large number of “out of stock” titles waiting to be reactivated as the titles come in again. We can’t delete them because we’re going to need the record eventually. However, all of these “out of stock” titles are also being included in the product sitemaps, even though they’re not visible on the website. This is generating a whackload of 404 errors and I’m afraid it will make Google hate us.

Is there some way to exclude “out of stock” products from the sitemaps?

Thanks!

• This topic was modified 7 years ago by mugwumpr. Reason: I answered the first half of the question myself, so I deleted it