Tuesday, September 13, 2022
Google is pleased to announce expanded eligibility for enhanced product experiences in
Google Search through the use of Product structured data. These enhanced
product experiences were previously only open to Merchant Center users. We’re also making
it easier to understand the requirements for these experiences by updating our documentation
and reporting in Search Console.
Expanded eligibility for websites that directly sell products
For some time, Google has provided shoppers with rich product experiences in search results.
To make these experiences more accessible to website owners, Google has expanded eligibility
for websites that implement structured data. For website owners, there are two broad categories
of experiences:
- Merchant listing experiences for web pages that allow shoppers to buy a product on the site.
- Product snippets for a broader set of web pages with product information (including
pages that sell products, publish product reviews, and/or aggregate information from other sites).
Initially, product snippets in Google search results were primarily powered by schema.org
Product structured data,
and merchant listing experiences were primarily powered by product details supplied via a
Google Merchant Center feed.
Now merchants can be eligible for merchant listing experiences by providing product data on web
pages without a Google Merchant Center account. This improved eligibility has in part been made
possible by recent extensions to product-related properties and types in schema.org for areas
such as apparel sizing and energy efficiency ratings.
Enhanced product experiences available in Search
Once you add structured data, you may be eligible for the following experiences.
Merchant listing experiences offer enhanced experiences including the
Shopping Knowledge panel and
Popular Products,
as well as shopping experiences in
Google Images and
Google Lens. The structured data
required for merchant listings and product snippets is described in our
Product structured data documentation.
Introducing new Search Console reports for site owners
To help websites take advantage of these experiences, the existing Search Console report for
Product structured data has been replaced with two reports: a new
Merchant listings report, and a
Product snippets report
(which subsumes the old Product report). These reports are
grouped under a new Shopping section in the Search Console navigation bar.
The reports allows you to see errors, warnings, and valid pages for markup implemented on your
site. The changes in reporting have also been reflected in the
Rich Result Test tool.
New Merchant listings report
- Identifies structured data issues for
free listing experiences
in search results. - Relevant to pages that sell products.
- Covers the wider range of schema.org structured data properties and types used by the
Producttype that are now supported for advanced cases, such as apparel sizing
and energy efficiency ratings.
Product snippets report
- Identifies structured data issues for product snippets in search results.
- Relevant to pages that share product review information or aggregate product data from
multiple sites. Note that pages selling products may also include product reviews. - Replaces the previous Product structured data report with adjustments related to the
separation of merchant listing validations into a dedicated report. The history of prior
validation errors is retained in this report.
Which report should I use?
If you are a merchant with an online store, you should:
- Check the merchant listings report for your pages selling products.
- If you publish product reviews on pages that don’t sell products, also check the Product snippets report.
If you don’t sell products online but still publish pages with Product structured data:
- Check the Product snippets report.
Learn more about Product structured data
To learn more, check our updated documentation on
Product structured data.
If you have questions, please reach out on the
Google Search Central forum.