Amazon rank drop after a stockout: how to get it back

Why are sales still down weeks after restocking?

In most cases, sales stay down because you lost organic rank on your main keyword while you were out of stock, and that rank only comes back once sales on that keyword come back.

But, before you get down to rank work, you need to know exactly where the problem started, and this step requires looking at every version of the product and not just the parent listing.

Often this drop starts before anyone on the team sees a zero, as one child ASIN (a single size, color or pack option) gets low while the listing as a whole looks perfectly fine.

We had this situation happen with a personal care brand that we manage. There was nothing in the campaigns to explain why their sales went down. When we looked at the variations one by one, we saw the best-selling one had sold 86 units in the last 30 days and only had 45 new units coming in. So by the time it ran out, it had been pulling back for some time via its ads and organic visibility.

Amazon provides you with a way to catch these issues early. The tool flags low stock for each ASIN separately, so we recommend opening the Minimum Inventory Level tool in Seller Central each week and reviewing each child ASIN, starting with your best sellers.

How a stockout hurts your ads and your rank at the same time

When a product goes out of stock, two things stop on the same day. First your ads stop showing and with them the sales they were bringing in. Secondly, because those sales were keeping your organic rank up, your rank starts to slide too.

Think of it like a bakery that closes down for 2 weeks. The regulars who came every morning have moved to another bakery down the street, so when the doors reopen, they don’t all come back right away. Some of them need a good reason to give you another chance.

What happens to your ads when the main product pauses?

Amazon Ads is very clear on this point: if your product is not in the Featured Offer or is out of stock, your ad will not display.

The problem is that the rest of the account continues to spend normally. The budget for your primary product doesn’t just sit there. It ends up on substitute products that convert much worse.

We saw this happen on another personal care account. When its biggest product was completely paused because of stock, ad spend fell by 39%, but ACoS jumped to 135.8% because the rest of the budget shifted to weaker products.

Looking at the account total, you would never have known where the money was actually going. This is why we always read ACoS product by product after a stockout.

Does low stock hurt ads before you hit zero?

Yes, and this situation should be treated as a stockout that is happening now. Then, you want to speed up the inbound units and stop scaling ads on that ASIN until the new stock actually lands because every extra sale that your ads push through only brings the zero closer.

This is our standard rule. For example, with FAAY, one of the brands we manage, we pull any product with less than 30 days of stock from ads and size each reorder to cover 90 days of sales.

How many days of stock do you need for your lead time?

The easiest answer for this question would be to measure your stock in days and then compare that number to your actual lead time. Actual lead time represents the total time from when you place the purchase order to when the units are available for sale on Amazon. So production, freight and Amazon check-in are all included.

If you fall below your lead time, you will run out before the next order arrives, no matter how big the order is.

For many of the brands we work with, the target is somewhere between 90 and 120 days, depending on their lead time. Our inventory planning guide has the full reorder point formula.

A golf travel brand that came to us had around 75 days from placing an order to having units live on Amazon. Our advice was to hold at least 100 days of stock and at most 120, while keeping an eye on storage fees.

If you sell something big, it’s always better to be closer to the low end of that range, because bulky products always cost more to store. Check your IPI score and storage limits before you send a large shipment so you do not run into a limit you did not plan before.

Price down, rank back, price up: how the sequence works

If your rank has slipped, a short price cut is the fastest way that we know to get the sales moving again. Once the rank comes back, the price can go back up, and when it is done in this order, your shoppers never get used to waiting for a discount.

1. Lower the price for a short window

A lower price allows your conversion rate to improve, and this improvement is what actually moves the rank on Amazon. For these few weeks, the margin on each order is less important than getting sales going again on your main keyword.

2. Push the main keyword with ads

Price alone brings sales back slowly, because shoppers still have to find the offer. Ads on your main keyword put the lower price in front of the people searching for it, and those are exactly the sales you want.

3. Track organic rank on that keyword every day

Daily tracking shows you the moment the rank starts to move. Without it, most sellers hold the discount much longer than they need to.

4. Raise the price in steps once rank holds

It’s important to not go to full price all at once. Small steps give conversion time to settle at each level and if sales drop too much after one of the steps, you know you went a little too far for now.

5. Keep the cut temporary

If you cut the prices permanently, it means you are shaving off margin on every unit that you sell going forward. It also alters what shoppers expect to pay for your product, and that is much harder to remedy than a drop in rank.

We set this exact plan for a sporting goods client that lost rank after a stockout: drop the price, win the rank back, then raise the price again.

Where should your ad budget go while the rank rebuilds?

Most of your ad budget should be allocated for the one keyword you need to rank for. Broad campaigns spread your money on many searches that do very little for the rank you actually lost. Amazon Ads points the same way: its budget guidance suggests shifting budget from low-performing or non-spending campaigns to the campaigns that actually drive sales.

What this approach means in practice is that you need to trim your broad and discovery campaigns and invest that amount of money into exact matches on your main keyword. Then you can start to broaden the targeting again once the organic rank on that keyword stabilizes.

This is how we run every recovery that we do on our accounts. We leave the spend on the main keyword the same until the sales velocity returns, because rank follows the sales on that keyword, but not the sales on everything around it. The broader targeting can be adjusted later.

Should you ever switch to seller-fulfilled as a stopgap?

Only in an emergency. Shipping the orders yourself keeps the listing live; however, the delivery date is shown right there in the search results and when that date is slower than Prime, you lose clicks to the competitors that are sitting next to you.

One of our clients asked about moving a low-stock product to seller-fulfilled. We said, keep it on Amazon stock so the delivery promise stays fast and steady.

We find that it is much better to spend the effort getting units into Amazon sooner, so if you are looking at the two options for the long term, our comparison of Amazon fulfillment vs. fulfilling orders yourself walks through both in detail.

From our accounts

We manage $100M+ in annual client revenue across 50+ brands, and stock issues are more common on these accounts than most people would expect.

The table below summarizes the situations discussed in this article. The client rows are from accounts we manage and the golf travel row is advice we gave to a brand that came to us.

The problem in all five cases is that it started before the stock went to zero, or continued after the stock recovered. That’s why we look at stock, ads, and rank together instead of 3 separate jobs.

Frequently asked questions about Amazon rank after a stockout

How long does Amazon rank take to recover after a stockout?

There is no set time; it depends on how long you were out of stock, how competitive your main keyword is, and how quickly sales come back once you are live again.

A product that disappears for a few days on a low-competition keyword will usually recover far faster than one that’s been gone for a month on a high-competition keyword.

Will I lose my reviews if my product goes out of stock?

The reviews are on the listing constantly, and they are still there when the units come back. What you lose is your recent sales history. Reviews will help shoppers decide to buy once they find you again, but they don’t bring the rank back by themselves.

Should I create a new listing and start over?

We do not recommend it in almost all instances. This is because you are starting over with zero reviews and there is no keyword history so you would be throwing away all that the old listing built up over time just to get away from a rank drop that is normally temporary.

How can I tell if the stockout caused the drop or if something else did?

First, line up the dates. If the rank declined during the same week your stock dipped to low or zero, it’s most likely that your stockout was the cause.

If it dropped before the stockout, or after you were already back in stock for a bit, check what else changed at that time, like a competitor dropping their price, a new seller popping up on your keyword, or an edit someone made to your listing.

What should I check on my listing once the stock is back?

Open the listing as a shopper would see it and ensure everything is back to the way it was.

All variations should be in stock and still linked to the main listing, as occasionally a size or color may show as out of stock even after the units have arrived.

It’s also a good idea to double-check that your price, coupons and promotions are still set how you want them, as a change made while the product was away can easily go unnoticed for weeks.

Final thoughts

A stockout always costs much more than the number of days it was out of stock. It takes your ads offline and lets your rank slip on the most important keywords. It can keep your sales down for weeks after the new units arrive.

The good news is that your ranking comes back once you give Amazon a reason to rank you again and that reason is consistent sales on your main keyword.

It’s important to check your stock and ACoS for each variation, keep your coverage consistent with your real lead time, and if the rank has dropped, run a short price cut with focused ad spend before you bring the price back up. This is the recovery plan we use on the accounts that we manage.

If you have already experienced a rank loss due to stockouts, our team can perform this recovery on your account. Every engagement comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee: if you’re not happy in the first 60 days, we refund your management fees.

If you would like to see what a recovery could look like for your brand, get your free marketing plan from Olifant Digital, and we will walk you through every step. You can also see how our Amazon account management works.