availability_date [availability_date]: Definition

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

When to use

• Optional for each product

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

Format

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

Type	Date, time and time zone, 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, 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.

• Ensure that you only use this attribute if you are sure that your product doesn't have any assigned unique product identifiers. 
• Products for which the identifier_exists [identifier_exists] attribute is incorrectly set to no [no] or false [false], and for which there is evidence that a unique product identifier exists, will be disapproved.

Best practices

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

• Only submit the availability_date [availability_date] attribute for products with availability [availability] set to preorder [preorder] or backorder [backorder].
• Specify a time and time zone in addition to the date. If you don't, the default time is 12 a.m. (midnight) in the UTC time zone.
• Don't include date ranges. Since the attribute is required for the preorder [preorder] and backorder [backorder] values, we recommend adding an estimated date and updating the value as soon as the expected date on which the product can be dispatched to the consumer is confirmed.

Examples

Product is available for preorder

Product	Android Squishable
availability [availability]	preorder [preorder]
availability_date [availability_date]	2016-12-25T13:00-0800

Product is available for backorder

Product	Android Squishable
availability [availability]	backorder [backorder]
availability_date [availability_date]	2016-12-25T13:00-0800

Get ready for the release date

Release status	Not released
Product	Android Squishable
availability [availability]	preorder [preorder]
availability_date [availability_date]	2016-12-25T13:00-0800