Product Schema

Product schema is schema.org markup that describes one item for sale or under review: its name, image, brand and identifiers, its price and availability, and the ratings it has received. It lets a search engine or an assistant read the facts of a product from the page rather than infer them from the copy.

Two results it can earn

Google documents two. Product snippets are for pages where the reader cannot buy the item directly, such as a review, and lead with the rating. Merchant listings are for pages where the reader can buy, and carry price, availability, shipping and return details. A snippet needs the product’s name and at least one of an offer, a review or an aggregate rating. A merchant listing needs the name, an image and an offer with a price and currency, on a page where the shopper can buy. Both apply only to a page about one specific product, or variants of it, never to a category or a list, and a page that meets the merchant-listing properties is eligible for the snippet as well.

The service-business trap

Most small businesses sell services. Marking a service up as a Product describes something the business does not sell, and it does not earn the results above, which are for products. schema.org has a Service type for this, with a provider and an area served; it feeds the business’s identity rather than a rich result. Product is for the item on the shelf.

Price at fetch time

An assistant asked what something costs reads the price from the page it fetched at that moment. An offer in the markup gives it a number it can attribute. A price list kept in a PDF does not: in this site’s own audit of 9,483 small-business sites, 2.1% held their real content, the price list or the service menu, in a PDF the crawler did not open. The audit write-up has the rest.

A common question

Should a business that sells services mark its offerings up as a Product?

No. Product markup describes an item for sale, so applying it to a service describes something the business does not sell, and it earns neither the product snippet nor the merchant listing, both of which are for products. schema.org has a Service type for this, carrying a provider and an area served, and it feeds the business's identity rather than a rich result. Product belongs to the item on the shelf.

Sources

Results and required properties: Google Search Central, product structured data. Types: schema.org/Product and schema.org/Service. The audit figure is this site’s own; sample drawn per metro and trade.