WooCommerce: Google labeling In Stock products as Out of Stock
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This is just one example of a page where Google has suddenly starting returning search results where items that are in stock are labeled as out of stock which is alarming and potentially destructive to our business, because we’re a retail store where people commonly find us first on Google. If you search for “seba cobra” on Google you will see what I mean — the page referenced here is the first result, but listed as “Out of stock.” Alternatively, if you search “seba snake” the image shows up in the top row, and if you click it, it does pop up with a link to visit the page, but the detail beneath it from the same page is labeled “Out of stock.” And this is not the only item where this is happening. Although we never use the Inventory feature, that was my first thought to check and see if something got checked as out of stock by accident. However, in every case, while looking at the page in the Product Page Editor, under Product data, in the Inventory menu we have “In stock” checked under “Stock status.” I have not added any new plugins in a very long time, and the plugin compatibility check-in is not showing anything out of the ordinary.
In the System Status Report below I spotted this which mentions “outofstock” but as I said, none of the affected products I have found are marked Out of Stock and furthermore, in the WooCommerce settings under Products: Inventory, neither “Enable stock management” nor “Hide out of stock items from the catalog” are checked either:
Taxonomies: Product Visibility: exclude-from-catalog (exclude-from-catalog) exclude-from-search (exclude-from-search) featured (featured) outofstock (outofstock) rated-1 (rated-1) rated-2 (rated-2) rated-3 (rated-3) rated-4 (rated-4) rated-5 (rated-5)Here is the full status report saved as “copy for Github”:
System Status Report
### WordPress Environment ### WordPress address (URL): [Redacted] Site address (URL): [Redacted] WC Version: 9.6.0 Legacy REST API Package Version: ✔ 1.0.5 Action Scheduler Version: ✔ 3.9.0 Log Directory Writable: ✔ WP Version: 6.7.2 WP Multisite: – WP Memory Limit: 768 MB WP Debug Mode: – WP Cron: – Language: en_US External object cache: – ### Server Environment ### Server Info: Apache PHP Version: 8.0.30 PHP Post Max Size: 128 MB PHP Time Limit: 300 PHP Max Input Vars: 10000 cURL Version: 8.11.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1w SUHOSIN Installed: – MySQL Version: 10.5.25-MariaDB-cll-lve Max Upload Size: 128 MB Default Timezone is UTC: ✔ fsockopen/cURL: ✔ SoapClient: ✔ DOMDocument: ✔ GZip: ✔ Multibyte String: ✔ Remote Post: ✔ Remote Get: ✔ ### Database ### [REDACTED] ### Post Type Counts ### amn_mi-lite: 3 attachment: 17431 custom_css: 1 jetpack_migration: 2 metagallery: 1 ml-slide: 25 ml-slider: 2 nav_menu_item: 12 oembed_cache: 2 page: 103 post: 2 product: 2928 revision: 10289 so_wc_template: 4 wccaf: 1 wp_global_styles: 1 wp_navigation: 1 wp_template: 2 ### Security ### Secure connection (HTTPS): ✔ Hide errors from visitors: ✔ ### Active Plugins (20) ### Duplicate Page: by mndpsingh287 – 4.5.4 Duplicate Taxonomy Term: by Sebastian Pisula – 1.0.2 MetaSlider: by MetaSlider – 3.95.0 Plugin Compatibility Checker: by Dinesh Pilani – 4.0.2 Products Admin Notes Simple: by Jamie Hall – 1.1 Regenerate Thumbnails: by Alex Mills (Viper007Bond) – 3.1.6 Simple Image Sizes: by Rahe – 3.2.4 Page Builder by SiteOrigin: by SiteOrigin – 2.31.4 SiteOrigin Premium: by SiteOrigin – 1.69.0 SiteOrigin CSS: by SiteOrigin – 1.6.3 SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle: by SiteOrigin – 1.64.2 Accessibility by UserWay: by UserWay.org – 2.5.3 WooCommerce.com Update Manager: by Automattic – 1.0.3 WooCommerce Legacy REST API: by WooCommerce – 1.0.5 WooCommerce Visibility: by codemine – 4.1 WooCommerce: by Automattic – 9.6.0 (update to version 9.6.2 is available) WooSidebars: by WooCommerce – 1.4.6 YITH Essential Kit for WooCommerce #1: by YITH – 2.39.0 YITH WooCommerce Catalog Mode: by YITH – 2.42.0 YITH WooCommerce Wishlist: by YITH – 4.2.0 ### Inactive Plugins (2) ### WP All Import - WooCommerce Add-On Pro: by Soflyy – 3.2.6 WP All Import Pro: by Soflyy – 4.6.9 ### Dropin Plugins () ### install.php: install.php maintenance.php: maintenance.php ### Must Use Plugins (1) ### WP Staging Optimizer: by René Hermenau – 1.1 ### Settings ### Legacy API Enabled: ✔ Force SSL: – Currency: USD ($) Currency Position: left Thousand Separator: , Decimal Separator: . Number of Decimals: 0 Taxonomies: Product Types: external (external) grouped (grouped) simple (simple) variable (variable) Taxonomies: Product Visibility: exclude-from-catalog (exclude-from-catalog) exclude-from-search (exclude-from-search) featured (featured) outofstock (outofstock) rated-1 (rated-1) rated-2 (rated-2) rated-3 (rated-3) rated-4 (rated-4) rated-5 (rated-5) Connected to WooCommerce.com: ✔ Enforce Approved Product Download Directories: – HPOS feature enabled: – Order datastore: WC_Order_Data_Store_CPT HPOS data sync enabled: – ### Logging ### Enabled: ✔ Handler: Automattic\WooCommerce\Internal\Admin\Logging\LogHandlerFileV2 Retention period: 30 days Level threshold: – Log directory size: 643 B ### WC Pages ### Shop base: #5 - /shop/ Cart: ❌ Page visibility should be public Checkout: #7 - /checkout/ - Contains the [woocommerce_checkout] shortcode My account: #8 - /my-account/ Terms and conditions: #20359 - /privacy-policy/ ### Theme ### Name: Vantage Child Version: 1.0.0 Author URL: http://siteorigin.com/ Child Theme: ✔ Parent Theme Name: Vantage Parent Theme Version: 1.20.27 Parent Theme Author URL: https://siteorigin.com/ Theme type: Classic theme WooCommerce Support: ✔ ### Templates ### Overrides: – ### Admin ### Enabled Features: activity-panels analytics product-block-editor coupons core-profiler customize-store customer-effort-score-tracks import-products-task experimental-fashion-sample-products shipping-smart-defaults shipping-setting-tour homescreen marketing mobile-app-banner onboarding onboarding-tasks pattern-toolkit-full-composability product-custom-fields remote-inbox-notifications remote-free-extensions payment-gateway-suggestions printful shipping-label-banner subscriptions store-alerts transient-notices woo-mobile-welcome wc-pay-promotion wc-pay-welcome-page launch-your-store Disabled Features: product-data-views experimental-blocks coming-soon-newsletter-template minified-js product-pre-publish-modal settings async-product-editor-category-field product-editor-template-system blueprint reactify-classic-payments-settings use-wp-horizon add-to-cart-with-options-stepper-layout blockified-add-to-cart Daily Cron: ✔ Next scheduled: 2025-02-20 14:21:12 -05:00 Options: ✔ Notes: 178 Onboarding: completed ### Action Scheduler ### Complete: 315 Oldest: 2025-01-19 20:00:03 -0500 Newest: 2025-02-19 14:23:45 -0500 Failed: 3 Oldest: 2023-03-06 11:41:33 -0500 Newest: 2024-01-10 17:36:20 -0500 Pending: 1 Oldest: 2025-02-20 09:30:04 -0500 Newest: 2025-02-20 09:30:04 -0500 ### Status report information ### Generated at: 2025-02-19 15:09:45 -05:00-
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The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]
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Thanks for checking, but no, I’m still seeing Out of Stock with that very same search “seba cobra.” I used to understand how to get Google to recrawl the product pages via the Search Console — it used to be simple — but this new system, as far as I can tell, requires me to generate a sitemap first or submit one URL at a time, and when I tried just submitting that URL, it rejected it as unfindable and took me to a sitemap page which I screenshot. (See https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/ask-google-to-recrawl and https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/build-sitemap to see what Google is asking for.) How would you suggest I go about creating the sitemap and pointing Google to it with WooCommerce? Does it have a feature that will do that? And are there instructions to walk me through the process step by step that I can refer to? My WordPress WooCommerce site are all within the URL https://www.georgeglazer.com/wpmain/.
(We do have some legacy pages as well that are not in WordPress that are only under http://www.georgeglazer.com (without the wpmain folder) that we’d like to Google to crawl as well so if you happen to know how to encompass those, please do include that advice.)
Also, what do you mean by clearing any caching plugins or CDN cache? I have never encountered those terms, and a search for WooCommerce clear cache on the WooCommerce site showed me a dashboard that apparently is no longer used by WooCommerce. So I need to know what I would do to clear them.
Hi Zubair,
You’re right, I think it’s maybe Google for WooCommerce that is the relevant one. I don’t think Google Analytics will fix this issue. I’m totally baffled and disturbed because now is see in the Google Search Console that Google has crawled the site, is returning results for URLs showing items as “In Stock” when I run the URL Inspection tool, and furthermore, showing the prices as valid through 12/31/26, and yet still shows these URLs as “Out of Stock” in the search results. Are there any other reasons Google is displaying one thing in the URL inspector and another in the actual search results that the public sees?
I was looking at the Google Merchants Center. https://merchants.google.com/mc/overview and that’s where you see the attached screenshot recommending Google for WooCommerce. We do meet the criteria in having items for sale with prices — although some are listed as Price on Request — and we could fill in the Shipping and Return policies info. But we do not have a “Shopping Cart” on our site. People have to communicate directly with us to place an order, and we use the YITH Catalog Mode plugin. Since the ordering process is not entirely automated, would that be incompatible with being listed in the Merchants Center or using Google for WooCommerce?
But also, what I’m really wondering is if this would solve the problem of having “Out of Stock” plastered on our search results or not. Or even possibly solve it? Or do you have advice as to where I can get a response from someone at Google, or which forum is likely to get their attention? In the Merchant Center documentation I did find this: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/14980864?hl=en which seems to imply there’s a way to fix these problems through the Merchant Center, if I understand it correctly.
I will check into that, just to rule those out, and just posted to the YITH Catalog Mode support forum. But it’s confusing because we’ve had YITH Catalog Mode activated since we started the WooCommerce site in 2016 and until two weeks ago, we never had this problem. I don’t think it’s WooCommerce Visibility because the pages listed as Out of Stock are not included in hidden categories.
I called and spoke to someone at another large art and antique website that lists multiple dealers selling unique items like we do, because I could see they also had items listed as Out of Stock that were in stock. She said they noticed the problem two weeks ago and it is some change Google has made that they, too, are trying to figure out and see if they need to make a change to prevent this. So this appears to be a problem that transcends our particular circumstance.
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