Feed attribute

availability

Stock availability

The availability attribute tells a channel whether an item can be bought right now, using a fixed vocabulary rather than a stock count. On Shopify it cannot be read from inventory quantity alone, because a variant that does not track inventory or that allows overselling is purchasable at zero quantity.

Specification

Attribute: availability
Data type: Enumerated value
Format: One of a fixed set of values, lowercase with underscores: in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder, backorder. Channels differ on which of the four they accept, and older specifications used space-separated forms such as "in stock" that still circulate in templates.
Examples: in_stock out_of_stock preorder backorder

Support by channel

How each channel treats availability.

Channel	Requirement	Field name	Notes
Google Shopping	Required	availability	Crawled from the landing page and compared against the feed.
Meta	Required	availability	Also accepts available_for_order and discontinued.
Microsoft Advertising	Required	availability
Pinterest	Required	availability	Only refreshed once every 24 hours.
OpenAI	Required	availability	Accepts in_stock, out_of_stock, pre_order, backorder or unknown. The Google-compatible variant spells the third one preorder.

Frequently asked questions

How do I work out availability from Shopify inventory?

Quantity alone is not enough. A variant is purchasable if it does not track inventory at all, or if it tracks inventory and has quantity above zero, or if it allows overselling when out of stock. Only a variant that tracks inventory, has no stock and denies overselling is genuinely out_of_stock.

What are the valid availability values?

The core vocabulary is in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder and backorder, written lowercase with underscores. Channels differ on which they accept, and Meta additionally recognises available_for_order and discontinued.

Why does Google say my availability does not match my site?

Usually the feed is stale. If a product sells out after the last feed generation, the feed still says in_stock while the crawled page says sold out. Regenerating the feed on a schedule that reflects how fast stock moves is the fix.

Errors involving this attribute

Mismatched value: availability The availability mismatch error means the feed says an item is purchasable but the crawled landing page suggests otherwise, or the reverse. On Shopify it is usually a stale feed after a sell-out, or an availability value derived from inventory quantity alone without accounting for variants that do not track inventory or that allow overselling.

Related attributes

price The price attribute is the item's full price before any discount, submitted as a number followed by an ISO 4217 currency code. It must match what a shopper sees on the landing page in that market, including whether tax is included, which is why multi-market Shopify stores so often trip the price mismatch disapproval.

Related concepts

Feed scheduling Feed scheduling is the arrangement where a sales channel fetches a feed from a fixed URL on a repeating timetable instead of the merchant uploading a file. It matters because the interval between regenerations is the window in which a channel can be wrong about a price or a stock level, and most mismatch disapprovals are caused by that window being too wide rather than by a bad mapping.

Primary sources

Channel specifications change. These are the official documents this page is based on.

Google: availability attribute specification

Last reviewed 16 September 2026 View as markdown