availability_date: Definition

Use the availability_date attribute to tell users when a preordered or backordered product will be shipped.

When to use

Optional for each product

Required if you set the availability attribute to preorder or backorder (In these cases, you can provide the date your product will be shipped using availability_date).

Format

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

Type	Date, time, and timezone, ISO 8601 compliant (`YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm[±hhmm]`, or `YYYY-MM-DDThh:mmZ`)
Limits	1–25 characters
Repeated field	No
Schema.org property (What's this?)	`Offer.availabilityStart`, Type: `DateTime`

File format	Example value
Text feeds	`2016-12-25T13:00-0800`
XML feeds	`<g:availability_date>2016-11-25T13:00-0800</g:availability_date>`

To format your data for Content API, see the Content API for Shopping.

Guidelines

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

Minimum requirements

These are the requirements 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 in the Diagnostics page in your Merchant Center account.

There are no minimum requirements for this attribute. Keep in mind that you still need to follow the formatting guidelines or the information you submit can't be used.

Best practices

To optimize your product data's performance, follow these best practices:

Only submit the availability_date attribute for products with availability set to preorder or backorder.
Specify a time and timezone in addition to the date. If you don't, the default time is 12 AM, midnight, in the UTC timezone.
Don’t include date ranges. Since the attribute is required for the preorder and backorder values, we recommend adding an estimated date and updating the value as soon as the expected date the product can be shipped to the consumer is confirmed.