availability [availability]: Definition

When to use

These are the supported values that you can choose from:

• in stock
  You're currently accepting orders for this product and can fulfil the purchase request. You're certain that the item will be delivered (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. The product can be in stock on your landing page, but it won't be shown in ads as long as it has this status. 
• preorder
  You're currently taking orders for this product, but it's not yet been released for sale. You can use the 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. 

Supported values	in stock [in stock] out of stock [out of stock] preorder [preorder]
Repeated field	No
Schema.org property (What is this?)	Offer.availability, Type: ItemAvailability  How to map to Merchant Center values: in stock [in stock]: InStock, LimitedAvailability, OnlineOnly out of stock [out of stock]: Discontinued, InStoreOnly, OutOfStock, SoldOut preorder [preorder]: PreOrder, PreSale

 

File format	Example value
Text feeds	in stock
XML feeds	<g:availability>in stock</g:availability>

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 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 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 when you take your website down for maintenance or a holiday. Ads for your products will not be shown until your website is ready to receive traffic again and you update your products to use 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 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