availability [availability]: Definition

When to use

Required for all products.

These are the supported values that you can choose from:

• in_stock [in_stock]
  • You're currently accepting orders for this product and can fulfil the purchase request. You're certain that the item will be dispatched (or be in transit to the customer) in a timely manner because it's available for sale. You can deliver the product to all of the locations that you support in your product data and account delivery settings.
• out_of_stock [out_of_stock]
  • You're not currently accepting orders for this product, or the product is not available for purchase or needs to be back-ordered.
• preorder [preorder]
  • You're currently taking orders for this product, but it's not yet been released for sale. You can use the availability_date [availability_date] attribute to indicate the date on which the product becomes available for delivery.

Note: The preorder [preorder] value should only be used for new items, and shouldn't be used for existing items that are out of stock and will be back in stock at a later date.​

Format

Follow these formatting guidelines to make sure that we understand the data that you're submitting. 

To format your data for Content API, have a look at the Content API for Shopping.

Guidelines

Follow these guidelines to make sure that you submit high-quality data for your products.

Minimum requirements

These are the requirements that you'll need to meet to show your product. If you don't follow these requirements, we'll disapprove your product and let you know on the Diagnostics page of your Merchant Center account.

• Show product availability on your landing page. Learn more about requirements for landing pages
• Match availability [availability] with your account delivery settings. Learn more about delivery settings
  • Deliver the product to all of the locations that you support in your product data and account delivery settings. This way, the availability that users see will match what you submit.
  • Match availability on your landing page and in your product data. When users come to your landing page, they expect to see the same availability that's provided in your product data. One common availability mismatch is that your delivery settings don't reflect your delivery locations correctly. For example, make sure that you can physically deliver a product to the state of California through specifying the delivery costs to deliver to California. Learn more about delivery settings
  • Make sure that the product can be delivered, not just picked up in store. In-store pickup is not currently supported, with the exception of Argentina and Chile.
• Provide the most up-to-date data. Availability and prices of your items can change quite frequently. Learn more about maintaining high-quality product data.

Best practices

These best practices can help you go beyond the basic requirements to optimise your product data for performance.

• Set availability [availability] to out_of_stock [out_of_stock] when your product is temporarily unavailable in the country of sale. If we find that a product is 'out of stock' on your landing page, but in_stock [in_stock] in your product data, we'll disapprove the product. The reason for the disapproval is to prevent you from paying for clicks to your product (if you are using Shopping ads) when you're not actually able to sell it. Instead of getting disapproved or confusing potential customers, let us know that a product has run out of stock so that we can stop showing your product until you're able to sell it again.
• Don't set availability [availability] to out_of_stock [out_of_stock] when you take your website down for maintenance or a holiday. Use the excluded_destination [excluded_destination] attribute instead. By following this best practice, you'll prevent unnecessary disapprovals in your account and get your products running again more quickly than if they'd been disapproved. Learn more best practices for landing page maintenance or a site outage
• Don't use out_of_stock [out_of_stock] when you want to prevent your product from being shown. If the product is available for sale but you'd like to stop your product from being shown for certain destinations, use the excluded_destination[excluded_destination] attribute. This way, you can, for example, disable your product from being shown on Shopping ads, but still show your products through other formats, such as dynamic remarketing display ads or surfaces across Google. Learn more about the excluded_destination [excluded_destination] attribute.
• Don't use out_of_stock [out_of_stock] for products that you're no longer selling. Remove any discontinued products from your product data.
• Consider using automatic item updates to help you avoid availability mismatches. Automatic item updates is a feature that uses your landing page status to automatically update your product data, preventing disapprovals. Learn how to set up automatic item updates.

Examples