WooCommerce: Disable Related Products Shuffle

By default, the WooCommerce Single Product page features a Related Product section. Here, you’ll find products that are related to the current product, based on product categories and product tags in common.

All good so far, but we need to make a few more notes: whenever WooCommerce “calculates” the list of Related Products, it searches for 15 of them (unless otherwise specified via custom code). Then, it shuffles them. And finally it gives you the first 5 of them (unless otherwise specified via custom code). At this stage, these are sorted by “rand” (unless otherwise specified via custom code).

This is because WooCommerce wants people to see different related products each time a single product page is loaded. It’s potentially good, but also it may get messy when, as a store owner, you may want to direct people to the same related products over and over again (i.e. always show the same set of related products).

And in order to do that, we need to do 2 changes: disable the shuffle, and disable the “rand” sorting. In this way, you should be able to show the same Related Products to all customers. Let’s see how this is done!

How can we always return these 3 related products every time this WooCommerce product page is reloaded?

PHP Snippet: Always Return The Same Set of Related Products @ WooCommerce Single Product Page

You should use both snippets: the first disables the shuffle of the 15 calculated related products. In this way, when WooCommerce gets the first 5 related products out of these 15, they will always be the same. The second snippet sorts these 5 not by random, so the result is always the same.

/**
 * @snippet       Disable Related Products Shuffle
 * @how-to        businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-customization
 * @author        Rodolfo Melogli, Business Bloomer
 * @compatible    WooCommerce 7
 * @community     https://businessbloomer.com/club/
 */

add_filter( 'woocommerce_product_related_posts_shuffle', '__return_false' );

/**
 * @snippet       Sort Related Products By Anything
 * @how-to        businessbloomer.com/woocommerce-customization
 * @author        Rodolfo Melogli, Business Bloomer
 * @compatible    WooCommerce 7
 * @community     https://businessbloomer.com/club/
 */

add_filter( 'woocommerce_output_related_products_args', 'bbloomer_sort_related_products' );

function bbloomer_sort_related_products( $args ) {
	$args['orderby'] = 'id';
	return $args;
}

// alternatively, use 'title', 'date', 'modified', 'menu_order' or 'price', see wc_products_array_orderby()

Where to add custom code?

You should place custom PHP in functions.php and custom CSS in style.css of your child theme: where to place WooCommerce customization?

This code still works, unless you report otherwise. To exclude conflicts, temporarily switch to the Storefront theme, disable all plugins except WooCommerce, and test the snippet again: WooCommerce troubleshooting 101

Related content

Rodolfo Melogli

Business Bloomer Founder

Author, WooCommerce expert and WordCamp speaker, Rodolfo has worked as an independent WooCommerce freelancer since 2011. His goal is to help entrepreneurs and developers overcome their WooCommerce nightmares. Rodolfo loves travelling, chasing tennis & soccer balls and, of course, wood fired oven pizza. Follow @rmelogli

4 thoughts on “WooCommerce: Disable Related Products Shuffle

  1. Thanks for the nice code, it works very well.
    Keep up the good work.

  2. I tried it and it works fine.
    I even applied it to a client’s online store.
    Thanks!

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