Google crawls your product pages and compares what it finds with the product data you sent. When the stock status differs, Merchant Center shows "Mismatched value (page crawl) [availability]". This guide covers what the issue means, the causes Google lists, and how to fix it.
What the issue means
Google requires the availability value in your product data to match the availability on your landing page. Its help pages say an account with this problem is either warned or has products disapproved, and that many mismatches can lead to account suspension.
- Where it appears: Products, then the Needs attention tab, with a filter for the issue name
- What is compared: The availability in your product data against the page Google crawled
- Supported values: in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder, backorder
Compare the same variant
Google's troubleshooting steps start with one product. Open a disapproved product from the issue filter, find the availability under Final Attributes, and compare it with the landing page. Check the same variant in both places, such as the same size and color.
A product can already match by the time you look. Google notes that a common cause is the time lag between a website change and the product data update.
Causes Google lists
Google's help page on availability inconsistencies lists specific causes. These are the ones most likely to affect an online store.
| Cause | What Google asks for |
|---|---|
| Unavailable variant pre-selected | The page should pre-select the exact variant in your product data |
| Sold out but sent as in stock | Use out_of_stock |
| Not yet released | Use preorder with an availability date |
| Stock changes by visitor location | Do not change availability by IP address |
| Postcode needed to see stock | Show availability without asking for one |
| Old structured data | Page, checkout, structured data and product data must all agree |
Fix it and get reviewed
Correct whichever side is wrong, then resubmit your product data. For a single product, Google's steps are to click the product title on the Needs attention tab, choose Edit product, set the availability to match the landing page and select Save. For many products, download the list of affected products as a .csv file and correct your product data at the source.
- Speed up reapproval: Request a website check. Google says the review may take up to 12 hours
- If you do nothing more: An automatic review happens later
- If you disagree: Select I disagree with the issue, then Request review
Stop it coming back
The lasting fix is keeping the two sources in step. Google suggests scheduling product data updates to coincide with your website updates. If that is not possible, or your stock changes often, it recommends automatic item updates.
- ❌ Setting products to out_of_stock to pause them. Google says to use the pause attribute for up to 14 days instead
- ✅ A default variant on the page that is in stock
For other issues, see the common reasons products are disapproved.
Doing this at scale
FeedFix checks every product against Google Merchant Center and Meta Catalog rules and scores each one from 0 to 100 per channel, so you can see which products have data problems. It also drafts compliant title and description rewrites that you review as before/after diffs and apply in bulk, with every change audit-logged. See FeedFix.