Deleting Products from Marqo

This guide shows you how to delete product documents from your Marqo ecommerce search index. Learn how to remove specific products by ID or completely reset your index.

Prerequisites

A Marqo Cloud account (sign up here)
Your Marqo API key (find your API key guide)
An existing ecommerce index with products (add products guide)

Delete Documents by ID

Remove specific product documents by making a DELETE /documents request with an ids array in the request body.

Endpoint: DELETE https://ecom.marqo-ep.ai/api/v1/indexes/{index_name}/documents

Request Body:

{
  "ids": ["43207430723", "43207430724", "43207430725"]
}

Single Product Deletion

Delete one product by providing a single ID in the ids array:

{
  "ids": ["43207430723"]
}

Batch Product Deletion

Delete multiple products by providing multiple IDs:

{
  "ids": ["43207430723", "43207430724", "43207430725", "43208765432"]
}

Single Product Deletion

Delete one specific product by providing its ID:

curl -X DELETE https://ecom.marqo-ep.ai/api/v1/indexes/{index_name}/documents \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer {api_key}" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d '{"ids": ["43207430723"]}'

Batch Product Deletion

Delete multiple products efficiently in a single request:

# Delete multiple products
curl -X DELETE https://ecom.marqo-ep.ai/api/v1/indexes/{index_name}/documents \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer {api_key}" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d '{"ids": ["43207430723", "43207430724", "43207430725", "43208765432"]}'

# Delete product variants
curl -X DELETE https://ecom.marqo-ep.ai/api/v1/indexes/{index_name}/documents \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer {api_key}" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d '{"ids": ["43207430726", "43207430727", "43207430728"]}'

Note: Replace {index_name} with your actual index name and {api_key} with your API key.

Deletion Response

The response provides detailed information about the deletion operation:

{
    "details": {
        "deletedDocuments": 2, 
        "receivedDocumentIds": 2
    },
    "items": [
        {"_id": "43207430723", "result": "deleted", "status": 200},
        {"_id": "43207430724", "result": "deleted", "status": 200}
    ]
}

Response Fields

Field Name	Type	Description
`details.deletedDocuments`	Integer	Number of documents successfully deleted
`details.receivedDocumentIds`	Integer	Number of document IDs received in the request
`items`	Array	Status of each individual document deletion
`items[].\_id`	String	The ID of the document
`items[].result`	String	Result of the deletion operation
`items[].status`	Integer	HTTP status code for this specific deletion

Status Codes

Status Code	Description
`200`	Document successfully deleted
`404`	Document with the specified ID was not found
`400`	Bad request (invalid ID format)
`500`	Internal error

Common Deletion Scenarios

Product Discontinuation

Remove discontinued products from your catalog:

curl -X DELETE https://ecom.marqo-ep.ai/api/v1/indexes/{index_name}/documents \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer {api_key}" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"ids": ["43209876543", "43209876544", "43209876545"]}'

Variant Management

Remove specific variants while keeping the parent product:

curl -X DELETE https://ecom.marqo-ep.ai/api/v1/indexes/{index_name}/documents \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer {api_key}" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"ids": ["43207654321", "43207654322"]}'

Seasonal Cleanup

Remove seasonal products after the season ends:

curl -X DELETE https://ecom.marqo-ep.ai/api/v1/indexes/{index_name}/documents \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer {api_key}" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"ids": ["43208123456", "43208123457", "43208123458"]}'

Catalog Migration

Reset index before importing new catalog:

# Clear existing catalog
curl -X POST https://ecom.marqo-ep.ai/api/v1/indexes/{index_name}/reset \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer {api_key}" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json"

# Then add new catalog using the add documents endpoint

Best Practices

Deletion Safety

Verify IDs - Ensure product IDs exist before attempting deletion
Backup data - Keep backups before bulk deletions
Test first - Test deletion operations on a staging index
Batch wisely - Delete in reasonable batch sizes (50-100 IDs)