Guide

Invalid Product Availability in Merchant Center: How to Fix

Why Google Merchant Center flags invalid product availability, the values Google accepts, and how to fix availability in your feed for every product at once.

Shown in Merchant Center as Invalid product availability Missing product availability

Last verified · 6 min read

Google Merchant Center shows Invalid product availability when the value in a product's availability attribute is not one Google recognises, such as "pending" instead of in_stock or out_of_stock (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Invalid product availability). To fix it, map every stock status in your source data onto Google's values, add availability_date for preorder and backorder items, and resubmit the feed.

What the error means

The availability attribute tells Google whether a product can be bought. When Merchant Center cannot recognise the value you sent, it reports the product under Invalid product availability: "The value that you provided for this attribute could not be recognized" (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Invalid product availability).

Availability is required for all products (Google Merchant Center Help, Availability [availability]), and Google asks you to submit it accurately and match the availability on your landing page (Google Merchant Center Help, Product data specification). A product with an unrecognised value cannot be listed until the value is fixed.

A separate issue, Missing product availability, applies to local inventory data: it means the availability status is missing from the inventory data Google uses to show whether a product is in stock at each of your stores (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Missing product availability).

The availability values Google accepts

As of October 2026, Google's availability attribute page lists these values (Google Merchant Center Help, Availability [availability]):

Value Google's definition
in_stock You are accepting orders for the product and can fulfil them.
out_of_stock You are not accepting orders, or the product is not available for purchase.
preorder You are accepting orders, but the product has not been released for sale. Only for new products. Requires availability_date.
backorder The product is not available at the moment, but you are accepting orders and will ship it when it is available again. Requires availability_date.

Google also lists build_to_order, but only for vehicle ads. The value is written the same way, for example in_stock, in both text (CSV or TSV) and XML feeds (same source).

Two rules trip up many feeds:

How to fix invalid availability

For a handful of products, Google's steps are (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Invalid product availability):

  1. In Merchant Center, open Products and select the Needs attention tab.
  2. Filter the table to the products with this issue.
  3. Click a product title, select Edit product, and set a valid availability value.
  4. Select Save.

For many products, download the list of affected products as a .csv file from the same tab, correct the availability values in your product data, and upload the data again with your usual method (same source). Google notes that changes may take 24–72 hours to show on the Needs attention page.

Editing products by hand in Merchant Center does not change the system that produced the bad value. If your feed comes from a store or plugin, the next upload brings the invalid value back, so fix the value where the feed is built.

Map store stock statuses onto Google's values

Most invalid availability values come from a store or plugin exporting its own stock statuses. WooCommerce, for example, stores a product's stock status as instock, outofstock or onbackorder (WooCommerce Developer Docs, Store API: Products), none of which is a Google value. A feed that passes those through unchanged fails for every product.

In Product Feed Master you can translate the values once, on the input mapping for availability, with transformation rules:

replace:instock,in_stock | replace:outofstock,out_of_stock | replace:onbackorder,backorder

The rules run on every sync, so new and updated products arrive with Google's values. Products set to backorder (or preorder) also need availability_date mapped from your source data. See how to clean product data with transformation rules for more examples, and field mapping for where the rules go.

Invalid versus mismatched availability

Invalid product availability is about the value in your feed. Mismatched product availability is a different issue: the value is valid, but it does not match what Google sees on your product page, for example in_stock in the feed while the page says sold out (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Mismatched product availability). Fixing that needs fresher data rather than different values; see mismatched product availability.

Frequently asked questions

What availability values does Google Merchant Center accept?

in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder and backorder, plus build_to_order for vehicle ads only. Preorder and backorder also need availability_date.

How long does it take for the error to clear?

Google says changes may take 24–72 hours to be reflected on the Needs attention page after you resubmit corrected data.

Can I check my feed for invalid availability before uploading it?

Yes. The free feed checker flags products with missing or unsupported availability values, and preorder or backorder products without availability_date.

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