Merchant Center flags availability: pre-orders, sold-out lines, variants and a feed that refreshes too slowly

What availability must agree with

Google's page says availability must be consistent across four places: the landing page, the checkout page, structured data if you use it, and the data source. A mismatch in any one can trigger disapproval. Like the price, the answer is to find which place disagrees. Unlike the price, availability changes the moment a unit sells, so the gap between a change on the site and the next feed update is the usual culprit. Google's help pages change; this guide reflects the pages as read on 11 October 2026.

Value by value

Set each value for what is true. A sold-out item is out_of_stock, not in_stock. A product not yet released is preorder with an availability date that is also visible on the page, and a backorder uses backorder with its date. If the site is down for maintenance, Google's page says to exclude the products with excluded_destination, not mark them out of stock. The page also lists causes that are not about the value at all: availability that changes by location, a variant that opens on the wrong option, a broken or greyed-out buy button, a postcode that must be entered before availability shows, products that cannot be delivered to a home address, and colour names on the page that differ from the feed.

• Do not vary availability by location on the page; use regional availability and pricing where it is offered.
• Keep the page, markup and feed updated in one step.

Refresh timing is a design choice

A scheduled file is fetched every 24 hours by default, so a product that sells out at 9am is still in stock in the feed until the next fetch. If stock turns over quickly, that lag will produce mismatches however correct the values are. The options are a faster refresh route through the Merchant API, a more frequent schedule where available, or a policy for fast-moving items. Google's older Content API for Shopping is not an option: its developer pages say it was sunset on 18 August 2026, with requests failing progressively from 1 September 2026, and name the Merchant API as the replacement. Google's automations page says automations are not a replacement for regular updates of product data, that they may not work for products with frequent price or availability changes (for example more than once per day), and that a product may be disapproved instead of updated if Google detects a mismatch. For frequent changes it says to use the Merchant API to manage product updates.

Other diagnoses to rule out

The page may be showing the wrong state because of caching, so the site is the cause rather than the feed. The data source may not be refreshing at all, which is a fetch fault, not an availability one. If the flag is about the account rather than items, none of this applies. A variant that opens the wrong option can look exactly like a stock mismatch.

A safe first investigation

Take five flagged products. For each note the feed value, what the page and checkout show for the agreed country, and when the feed last refreshed. If feed and page differ and the refresh time is old, the cause is timing. If they differ and the refresh is recent, the cause is the source field or a variant. Send redacted diagnostics and those notes, not logins.

How the paid job is accepted

The job merchant-center-price-availability-mismatch is £345 for up to 25 named products. Acceptance covers availability as well as price: the corrected feed value must equal the landing page and checkout; processed diagnostics must show no mismatch for the agreed products; and a test change made by your account holder (to the price of one agreed product, or to the price or availability of a product in a separate test data source, restored afterwards) must reach the feed output within the stated time under the written refresh route. Building or migrating an API integration is not part of the fixed job. We do not invent or alter stock figures; we match what your site truly shows. Prices are untested proposals, and payment follows the agreed checks and your sign-off. Nothing is booked or charged by an enquiry. Google's review and recrawl timing and decisions are its own, and approval is never promised.