Interesting little SEO experience ...

I have a physical product website (dropshipping) that I decided wasn't worth the upkeep, so on all the pages I deleted the product order buttons / links and replaced them with an 'out of stock' notice.

That top 10 site in Google immediately began a rankings slide. Now it's in the 60s.

I wasn't expecting that, although the result is probably what should happen. Ecommerce pages with out out stock notices should slide, although I suspect if I wanted to keep a ranking I shouldn't use those words.