A fictional business. The figures are a modelled scenario, not a client result.
Case study · Maplestave Hardware · Hardware co-op, 42 stores · Calgary
9 months · Commerce SEO · North America. Pick a tool off the board to read its tag.
Pick up a tool to read the result on its tag. Arrow keys move along the board.
Customers checked big-box sites for stock; Maplestave's 28,000 SKUs had no availability data in search and store pages carried no inventory signals.
A Calgary customer who needs deck screws on a Saturday morning searches before they drive. Google answered with the stores that told it what was on the shelf, and for Maplestave Hardware that was nobody: 42 co-op stores, 28,000 SKUs, and not one of them visible as “in stock nearby”.
Store pages were address cards. Product pages had a price but no availability. The result was a co-op with better depth of range than the chains, losing the walk-in before the customer ever left home.
On the shelf
28,000
SKUs across 42 stores
In search
0
SKUs with local stock data
Store pages
42
with hours + address only
Stock signals
0
on any store page
Zero of 28,000 SKUs reached Google's local surfaces. Stock lived only in the POS, so 'in stock nearby' results always went to the big-box chains.
All 42 store pages shared one template of hours and an address. No departments, no stock, no product links: nothing for a 'near me' query to match.
Product schema had name and price only; no Offer availability, no store-pickup data, and 4,800 Merchant listing warnings.
Own-label fasteners, cut lumber and co-op lines had internal codes only, so they could not be matched to product searches.
Business Profile store codes did not match POS store IDs for 11 locations, which blocks inventory from attaching to the right map pin.
Colour, size and brand filters generated 410,000 crawlable URLs; Googlebot spent 61% of its visits on them instead of products.
The engagement ran on our Commerce SEO plan: feeds and markup first, so that every page we improved had live stock to show.
Paid backstop for the free listings on the 600 SKUs where a big-box rival outbids organic visibility.
A nightly, then two-hourly, pipe from 42 POS systems into Merchant Center: price, quantity and pickup option per store.
Each of the 42 stores became a real landing page: departments, live stock counts, an aisle map and local services.
Machine-readable shelves: Product, Offer and Store markup tying every product page to the stores that hold it.
Query: “deck screws near me”, Bowness, Calgary. Modelled mock-up.
In stock nearby
BigBox Home Centre
In stock · 4.1 km · Pickup today
Lumberyard Depot
In stock · 6.8 km
Maplestave Hardware
Hardware store · Open until 8 pm
In stock nearby
Maplestave Hardware Bowness
In stock (38) · Pickup today · 1.2 km
BigBox Home Centre
In stock · 4.1 km
Maplestave Hardware Montgomery
In stock (12) · 2.9 km
Free listing: #10 × 3″ deck screws, 5 lb · $34.99 · in stock at 6 nearby stores
Each chip on the fan is one month; the colour deepens as more of the range reaches search. Choose a chip (or use the arrow keys) to read its work order.
Chip MS-09 · Month 9 of 9
26,400 of 28,000 SKUs live in search with store-level stock; handover runbook and feed-health alerts in place.
Modelled scenario for a fictional business — not a client result. Rankings and traffic are never guaranteed; see our Terms.
SKUs in local inventory feed
0 → 26,400
Each box = 1,000 SKUs. 94% of the range now carries store-level stock.
Organic pickup orders
+58%
Free listing impressions
2.3M/mo
Store page CTR
+44%
Store pages in Search Console, average across all 42 stores; scale to 6%.
| Query | Searches/mo | Before | Month 9 | Stock shown |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| deck screws near me | 2,900 | — | Local pack #1 | Yes, per store |
| cordless drill in stock calgary | 1,300 | #31 | #2 | Yes, per store |
| hardware store open now | 6,600 | #14 | #3 | n/a |
| pressure treated 2x6 calgary | 880 | — | #1 | Yes, per store |
| snow shovel pick up today | 1,600 | — | Free listing #1 | Yes, per store |
| maplestave hardware bowness | 720 | #4 | #1 | n/a |
| furnace filter 16x25x1 near me | 1,000 | — | Local pack #2 | Yes, per store |
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Multi-location retailer with stock that search can’t see? Commerce SEO starts with a feed and store-page audit.