Why it matters
Google's guide to pausing a business recommends staying online with limited functionality, such as a disabled cart, and updating Product markup with current availability. Google's answer on out-of-stock pages was that it depends on how important the page is to users, who may wait months or pre-order; a temporary redirect keeps the source URL in results anyway.
How to meet it
Keep the page at 200, show the availability (OutOfStock, PreOrder, BackOrder) on the page and in Product markup, offer pre-ordering or a back-in-stock alert, and link to alternatives. Redirect with 301 only when the product is gone for good and a true successor exists; otherwise return 404 or 410 for discontinued items.
How to test it
The Rich Results Test shows the current availability in Product markup; out-of-stock URLs answer 200 and stay indexed in URL Inspection.
How Regensbot covers it
Decided from one URL.
An audit reads the response, the headers, the HTML, robots.txt, the sitemaps and the structured data, and the finding shows the evidence it saw.
Sources
Google documents03
- 01Temporarily pause or disable a websiteGoogle Search Central (opens in a new tab)
- 02Redirects and Google SearchGoogle Search Central (opens in a new tab)
- 03Merchant listing (Product, Offer) structured dataGoogle Search Central (opens in a new tab)
Claims in the knowledge base05
- D2-C012SourceWelcome to indexing day!Google's documentation
- D2-C010UndocumentedWelcome to indexing day!Shown on screen
- D2-C011ConsistentWelcome to indexing day!Shown on screen
- D2-C013SourceWelcome to indexing day!Google's documentation
- D2-C014n/aWelcome to indexing day!The author's interpretation
Claim IDs refer to the Search Central Live 2026 knowledge base. The knowledge base (opens in a new tab)
- Consistent
- Google's documentation supports it without stating it.
- Undocumented
- Said or shown at the event, not in the documentation.
- Source
- The claim is the cited document itself.
- n/a
- Nothing to verify: a quotation, framing, opinion or analysis.