Google Shopping for Pre-Order and Out-of-Stock Products: The Complete Guide

Pre-orders, back-orders, and out-of-stock products are a constant operational reality for e-commerce stores. They're also one of the most common sources of GMC disapprovals and, in some cases, account-level suspensions.

Google's policies around availability are stricter than most sellers realize. The rules aren't complicated, but they require precise feed attributes, consistent landing pages, and accurate shipping date information — all of which have to stay in sync as inventory status changes.

This guide covers every availability scenario in full detail.

The Four Availability Values in GMC

The availability attribute in your product feed accepts exactly four values. Understanding when to use each one is the foundation of handling non-in-stock products correctly.

Value	When to Use	Shipping Date Required?
in_stock	Product is available and ships immediately or within your stated timeframe	No
out_of_stock	Product is temporarily unavailable — no restock date confirmed	No
preorder	Product hasn't been released yet — customer pays now, receives later	Yes — required
backorder	Product is temporarily out of stock but restocking is confirmed	Yes — required

Setting Up Pre-Orders Correctly

Pre-orders are legitimate on Google Shopping, but Google treats them differently from in-stock products. Shoppers searching Google Shopping are generally in buying mode — they want products now. Pre-orders require extra transparency signals to avoid misrepresentation flags.

Required feed attributes for pre-orders

• availability: preorder
• availability_date: The expected ship date in ISO 8601 format (e.g., 2026-09-15T00:00:00). This must match the date shown on your landing page.
• price: Must reflect the actual pre-order price — the amount the customer pays. If the launch price differs from the pre-order price, use the pre-order price.

Optional but recommended

• shipping: Include an estimated shipping date range consistent with availability_date
• Clear "Pre-Order" language in the product title (e.g., "[Pre-Order] Product Name — Ships September 2026")

The availability_date window

Google allows pre-orders with availability dates up to one year in the future. Products with availability_date set more than 12 months out will be disapproved. If your product genuinely ships more than a year from now, you cannot list it on Google Shopping until within the 12-month window.

Pre-Order Landing Page Requirements

This is where most pre-order disapprovals originate. Google's automated crawlers compare your feed attributes against your landing page. The page must match the feed on every key data point.

What your landing page must show

• Pre-order status clearly labeled: "Pre-Order," "Available for Pre-Order," or "Ships [date]" must be visible on the page. A product page that shows a standard "Add to Cart" button with no pre-order indication fails this requirement.
• Expected ship date: The date shown on the page must match your availability_date attribute exactly (or within a few days tolerance). If your feed says September 15 and your page says "Ships Q4 2026," that's a mismatch.
• Price matching: The price on your page must match your feed price for the pre-order. If you're running an early-bird discount, your feed price must reflect the discounted pre-order price.
• Deposit vs. full price: If customers pay only a deposit at pre-order and the remainder at shipping, this must be clearly disclosed. The price attribute should show the full price, with a note about the deposit structure on the page.

Cancellation policy for pre-orders

Google requires that pre-order cancellation policies be clearly accessible. Buyers must be able to cancel pre-orders and receive a full refund before the product ships. If you don't allow cancellations on pre-orders, this is a policy violation.

Handling Back-Order Products

Back-orders are similar to pre-orders but apply to products that have been sold before and are temporarily out of stock with a confirmed restock date. The key difference: back-orders have a known restock date, whereas out-of-stock products don't.

Back-order feed setup

• availability: backorder
• availability_date: Your confirmed restock/ship date
• Landing page must show back-order status and estimated ship date

Restock date accuracy

If you're importing inventory from a supplier and they give you estimated restock dates, treat those estimates with healthy skepticism before publishing them to Google. If your availability_date passes and the product still hasn't shipped, your products face disapproval for inaccurate availability data. Update availability_date proactively when restock dates slip.

Back-order vs. just listing as out_of_stock

If you know your restock date, backorder with an availability_date keeps your products eligible for Shopping impressions (especially the Shopping tab free listings). out_of_stock products are generally excluded from Shopping ads and heavily deprioritized in free listings. If you have a confirmed restock date, use backorder — it's worth the extra attribute management to keep visibility.

Out-of-Stock: Keep Listed or Remove?

When a product runs out of stock with no confirmed restock date, you have two options: update availability to out_of_stock or remove the product from your feed entirely. Both are valid approaches with different tradeoffs.

Keeping products as out_of_stock

Pros: Preserves your product data history in GMC, keeps your feed clean with consistent product IDs (important for remarketing and conversion tracking), allows Google to crawl the page and maintain any index equity.

Cons: Out-of-stock products still count against your feed's quality score if they accumulate in large numbers. Google doesn't show out-of-stock products in ads, but they take up feed processing bandwidth.

Removing from the feed

Pros: Clean feed with fewer items to process. Eliminates any risk of showing OOS products (which would generate clicks with no conversion).

Cons: If the product comes back into stock, you need to re-add it. Google will treat it as a new product and restart any data quality history for that ID. For dynamic remarketing, removing products from the feed breaks retargeting for anyone who viewed that product.

Recommended approach

Keep products in the feed as out_of_stock for up to 30 days. If they remain out of stock beyond 30 days with no restock plan, remove them. This balances feed hygiene with the operational cost of managing product data.

Shipping Date Requirements for Pre-Orders

The availability_date attribute tells Google when the product ships from you. But there are additional shipping-related attributes that interact with pre-order data:

availability_date format

Must be in ISO 8601 format: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss[+HH:MM]. The most common error is submitting a date without the time component, which causes parsing failures in some feed formats. Safe approach: always include the time component, even if it's T00:00:00.

Consistency with shipping settings

Your account-level shipping settings in GMC define your standard handling time. For pre-order products, the availability_date overrides the standard handling time calculation. Make sure your shipping configuration accounts for this — a product with a 3-month pre-order shouldn't show "ships in 2 business days" on the product listing.

What happens when the date passes

If your availability_date passes and you haven't updated the availability to in_stock, Google may auto-disapprove the product or flag it for inaccurate availability. Set a calendar reminder to update your feed the moment pre-order products ship. This is one of the most commonly missed operational steps.

Common Policy Traps for Non-In-Stock Products

Platform-Specific Notes

Shopify

Shopify's native Google & YouTube channel app maps Shopify "Sold Out" to out_of_stock and "Available" to in_stock. It does not automatically handle preorder or backorder. If you use pre-order apps like Pre-Order Now or Deposit & Pre-order Manager, you'll need to use supplemental feed rules or a third-party feed tool to override the availability attribute. Check your feed in GMC's Feeds section to verify the actual values being submitted.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce's built-in backorder setting ("Allow but notify customer") maps to backorder in the official Google Listings & Ads extension — but only in recent versions. Verify the extension version and test a backorder product in your feed diagnostics before assuming it's mapped correctly.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce's native Google Shopping integration supports preorder availability but requires manual date entry per product. There's no bulk pre-order date management in BigCommerce's native tools; use a supplemental feed to manage dates at scale if you have frequent pre-orders.