Limits and constraints

This section describes the limits and constraints on using the orders resource.

Quotas and rate limits

The resource is free to use, but has quotas and rate limits, as described in Published Limits for the Content API for Shopping.

Cancelled orders

Orders that are cancelled with a noInventory reason will lead to the removal of the product from Buy on Google until you make an update to that product. This will not affect your Shopping ads.

Sandbox test orders

Orders created in the sandbox environment, using orders.createtestorder, are available for six months from when they are created, and then deleted.

Order ship times

Currently, if an order is not shipped within 30 days, Google will automatically cancel the order. The cancellation reason will be orderTimeout. This value cannot be set by merchants as a cancellation reason.

Order of operations of custombatch

Custombatch order of operations are not guaranteed. Do not include in the same batch request any operations which depend on another operation in the same batch.

From a conceptual point of view, assume that all operations in a batch are executed simultaneously, and that the order of operations is nondeterministic. This generally means not putting operations affecting the same orderId in the same batch, though there are exceptions to this rule of thumb.

Request frequency

As a best practice, wait for a response to a request on an order before executing a second request. For example, since request data can sometimes take some time to propagate through our system, we do not guarantee that a GET request made immediately after making a POST will reflect the changes. If you receive a successful response from your POST request, that is sufficient proof that the POST request was executed. There is no need to issue a GET request to 're-confirm' this.

Known Issues

Since the API Sandbox is still in a preview, we have a number of known issues that we are working on resolving. We will try to keep this list up to date with the latest version of the API.

list method

The list method has the following known issues:

  • maxResults: This field is not yet implemented, but will be available soon with a default of 25 results and a max value allowed of 250.
  • orderBy: This field does not support ASC (ascending) for the time being. It only supports DESC (descending).
  • acknowledged: The list may time out when using the acknowledged parameter. To mitigate this, add placedDateStart to the method call and make its value one week or one month ago (orders older than 1 month will be automatically cancelled).

    While this issue hasn’t been seen in production, including the placedDateStart parameter in the list call reduces the time needed for the call to execute.

actor attribute

There is an actor attribute in refunds, cancellations, and returns that you can use to determine who initiated those respective actions. However, this field is not yet available in refunds and returns of the Orders object.

The field will be available in the future.