availability [availability]: Definition

When to use

Required for each product

Required for all products.

These are the supported values that you can choose from:

• in stock
  • You're currently accepting orders for this product and can fulfill 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
  • You're not currently accepting orders for this product, or the product is not available for purchase. 
• 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 day that the product becomes available for delivery.

Note: The 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. 

For format API information, please see Content API for Shopping.

Guidelines

Follow these guidelines to make sure that you submit high-quality data for your products and get the best performance from your ads.

Minimum requirements

These are the requirements that you'll need to meet to show ads for 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 Shopping ads landing pages.
• Match 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 mainland Europe through specifying delivery costs for mainland Europe. Learn more about delivery settings.
  • Make sure that the product can be delivered, not just picked up in store. Click & collect is not currently supported.
• Provide the most up-to-date data. Availability and prices of your items can change quite frequently. Learn best practices for maintaining high-quality product data.

Best practices

These are best practices that 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 target country. 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 when you're not actually able to sell it. Instead of getting disapproved or confusing potential customers, let us know that a product has gone out of stock so that we can stop ads from being shown until you're able to sell the product again.
• Set availability [availability] to out of stock [out of stock] when you take your website down for maintenance or a holiday. Ads for your products will stop being shown until your website is ready to receive traffic again and you update your products to use in stock [in stock]. By following this best practice, you'll prevent unnecessary disapprovals in your account and get your ads 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 ads being shown for your product. If the product is available for sale but you'd like to stop showing ads for the product, use the excluded_destination [excluded destination] attribute. This way, you can disable Shopping ads and still take advantage of other formats, such as Dynamic Remarketing Display ads campaigns 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