Fix “Invalid product availability” in Google Merchant Center
Typical Merchant Center message: Invalid product availability
Reviewed October 14, 2026 against Google’s published rules.
Google reports invalid product availability when the value you sent for availability is not one Merchant Center recognizes. Google’s example: in_stock and out_of_stock are accepted, but pending is not.
Values to use
Use one of the supported values: in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder or backorder. Use the underscore and lower case exactly as written.
For preorder and backorder items, Google’s availability rules also ask for an availability date.
How to fix it
- Open Products, then Needs attention, and filter for this issue.
- Replace the unsupported value with a supported one for each affected product, using Edit product or your own product data.
- Check how your export writes stock status. Words such as “In Stock”, “available” or “pending” need to be converted to the supported values.
- To fix many products at once, download the .csv list of affected products from the Needs attention tab, correct your product data and re-upload it.
- Google says it can take 24–72 hours for a fix to leave the Needs attention list.
Check your own catalog for these issues
FeedGuard checks every availability value against the supported list and shows which rows use something else. It can also tidy values such as “In Stock” into in_stock when you confirm the change.
Google’s requirement: support.google.com/merchants/answer/6239397. FeedGuard checks your data against published rules; Google makes the final approval decision.
Independent guidance. Google’s current documentation and decisions control. FeedGuard is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Google or Shopify, and this guide is not an official Google Help Center page.