Sold-out products at the top of a collection are a wall of dead ends. The three ways to push them down — manual reordering, the Flow tag-and-exclude workaround, and full automation — with steps, trade-offs, and SEO notes.
Read the guideNot natively — every sort order ignores inventory. What Shopify offers, the features people mistake for stock-based sorting (smart collections, Search & Discovery, Flow), and how automated in-stock-first sorting actually works.
Read the explainerBest selling, Title, Price, Date, Manually, and the new Most relevant — what each actually does, the details that trip people up, and which default fits which collection type.
Read the referencePush down what will restock; hide what won't. The honest decision framework — SEO impact, restock demand, catalogue type — and the hybrid most stores end up running.
Read the articleSink, StockIQ, MB, PushLast, Pushy, and EM Sort — compared honestly on the split that decides it: product-capped vs. collection-capped pricing, plus update frequency, ratings, and badges. Live data, July 2026.
Read the roundupPushing sold-out products down is the easy half. The expensive half is the restocked product nobody moves back up — how webhook-driven repositioning returns it to your sort order within minutes.
Read the guideEight causes cover almost every case — from per-collection enablement and "Continue selling" settings to location mismatches, untracked inventory, and the theme's sort dropdown. Work through them in order.
Read the checklistSink keeps your collections sorted in real time — free plan available.
