Under the new policy called “Inaccurate availability”, the search engine giant may suspend merchant websites that show invalid product availability.
The new policy is looking to penalise websites that show products available on the landing page, only for it to come up as unavailable on the checkout page. This inconsistency policy will be in effect from September 1 this year.
The new “Inaccurate availability” policy will replace the existing “Delivery issues” policy. Ecommerce businesses can receive a warning or suspension if they violate this policy.
A few factors that could violate this policy are the non-functional buy button, the use of IP detection/geolocation, and price changes between landing pages and checkout pages. In addition, the search engine giant explained, “it’s a bad customer experience if product availability changes from ‘in stock’ on the landing page to ‘out of stock’ or ‘unavailable’ after the product has been added to a cart…”
[3 minute read]
