Start with the product’s route into the candidate pool
The GoScript Smart Cart Recommendations WordPress plugin only displays products that first become suitable candidates for the current Cart, then pass the final shopper-facing eligibility checks. When an expected product is absent, the fastest route forward is to review its source, its relationship to the Cart products, and its current availability.
This is a useful diagnostic process, not a dead end: every check helps you decide whether global history, a manual product list, a matching rule, or an exclusion should shape that pairing next.
1. Confirm which recommendation source should surface it
For a product using global smart recommendations, the expected item needs qualifying co-purchase evidence with the relevant Cart products under your current order-history settings. For a product using manual recommendations, confirm the expected item is included in its saved manual product list.
Global smart sourceCandidate relationships come from qualifying WooCommerce Analytics co-purchase history.
Manual sourceCandidate relationships begin with the direct product choices saved for the individual product.Use the product-level recommendation preview to review the current saved setup before testing the full Cart combination.
2. Review the evidence behind a global candidate
Global candidates are shaped by your selected history window, included order statuses, minimum shared-order threshold, and any category or tag matching rule. An expected product may be a genuine complement in your merchandising plan without yet having enough qualifying shared-order evidence to be selected automatically for this Cart.
If you want to guide that pairing now, use a manual product list for the relevant Cart product. Otherwise, review one global rule at a time and test again with a representative Cart.
3. Check the full Cart context
Smart Cart Recommendations combines evidence across the eligible products currently in the Cart. The final result is based on the whole Cart context, not on a single product relationship in isolation.
Test the expected pairing in a focused Cart first, then add the other products your shoppers commonly buy alongside it. That makes it easier to see how a different Cart combination changes the available recommendation evidence.
4. Confirm the product is ready to be shown
Even a strong source candidate is removed before display when it is already in the Cart, duplicated, unpublished, hidden, out of stock, non-purchasable, or excluded by a global product, category, or tag rule.
5. Review matching and exclusions deliberately
Optional same-category, same-tag, or category-or-tag matching can narrow the candidates a global source considers. Global exclusions can also remove a product, its category, or its tag from the final pool. Both are useful strategy controls, so review them as purposeful choices rather than simply disabling them.
If the expected item should be available more broadly, adjust the relevant rule, save Settings, and refresh a focused test Cart.
6. Refresh before judging a recent change
- Review the product source, order-history rules, matching, and eligibility checks.
- Make one focused adjustment or save the correct manual product list.
- Save Settings to advance the recommendation cache version, or use the dedicated cache-clear action.
- Refresh a representative main Cart and review the new result.
A one-change-at-a-time approach makes it much easier to understand which control brought the expected product into the recommendation strategy.
Turn an expected pairing into a deliberate strategy
If a product deserves a guaranteed place alongside a particular Cart item, manual recommendations give you direct control. If you want the pairing to emerge from customer behaviour, global history settings let you decide how much evidence it needs before it is surfaced automatically.
The GoScript Smart Cart Recommendations WordPress plugin gives you both paths, so you can move from a question about one missing product to a stronger Cart discovery strategy overall.
Next steps
Continue with the guides that explain candidate sources, final eligibility, and direct product-level control.
