Out-of-stock products and AI recommendations
Shopify Catalog carries live availability, so a product with nothing in stock will not be recommended. This is the single most common finding in our scan, and much of it is discontinued stock nobody archived.
In short
- The product stays in Shopify Catalog, but assistants have less to match against when a shopper describes what they want.
- Found in 90% of the catalogs we scanned.
- This one needs a human decision, so Endcap finds and groups it but does not write it for you.
Why this weakens matching
Shopify Catalog syndicates live availability. A product with nothing in stock will not be recommended to buyers.
Shopify Catalog syndicates live availability. A fully out-of-stock product is not recommended to buyers.
How common it is
This appeared in 90% of the stores we scanned, affecting 26.3% of all products scanned. These are brands with staff and agencies, so it is not a small-merchant problem.
The most common finding, and mostly not a stock problem
This appeared in more of the catalogs we scanned than anything else, and the instinctive reading is that these are stores with supply problems. Looking at the actual products, that is usually wrong. The bulk of it is discontinued inventory that nobody archived: last season's colourway, the size that was dropped, the collaboration that ended two years ago.
Which reframes it from an operations problem to a hygiene one. Availability is syndicated live, so these products are diluting your catalog rather than sitting harmlessly in the background, and every one of them is a candidate an assistant might consider and then discard. Archiving a permanently discontinued product is not deleting history; the orders remain, the reporting remains. It is telling the feed the truth about what you sell today.
How to check it yourself
- Filter by inventory to find products with zero available across all variants.
- Restock, or archive anything permanently discontinued so it stops diluting your catalog.
The fix
Restock, or archive the product if it is permanently discontinued so it stops diluting your catalog.
How Endcap handles this
Endcap finds and groups every product with this problem and links each finding to the Shopify document behind it, but it does not write this one for you. Across the catalogs we scanned this affected 26.3% of products, which is the kind of number that is tedious by hand and quick in bulk.
The fix touches a field we deliberately do not automate. Endcap only ever writes vendor, product type and description, because those are the three where a wrong value is visible and reversible. Prices, identifiers, publication state and status are decisions with consequences a tool should not be making on your behalf.
Common questions
This is a stock problem, not a data problem.
Usually it is neither. Looking at the actual products behind this finding, most are discontinued lines nobody archived: last season's colourway, the dropped size, the collaboration that ended. That is hygiene rather than supply.
Should I archive out-of-stock products?
Archive the permanently discontinued ones. Orders and reporting are unaffected by archiving. For genuinely temporary stockouts, leave them and restock; availability is syndicated live, so they return on their own.
Why is this the most common finding?
Because nothing in Shopify pushes you to archive, and every catalog accumulates. It appeared in more of the catalogs we scanned than any other check.
Source: Shopify documentation
Check your own store
Enter your Shopify URL and see whether the public products we can inspect show these problems. No install required for the first scan.