Structured Data - Change History & Alerts

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Structured Data Change History Timeline

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March 2024
25

Added new 3DModel markup support for merchant listings

Google updated the Product structured data documentation by adding new 3DModel markup support for merchant listings, allowing site owners to link a 3D model to a specific product (on pages with multiple products).

February 2024
20

Clarification added to a recommended property for Product rich result

Google updated the Merchant listings return policy documentation, clarifying when to use FreeReturn versus ReturnShippingFees as value for returnFees for product returns, in order to better support more granular shipping and return fee scenarios.

January 2024
09

Added support for specifying age ranges to Product search feature

Google amended the documentation for the Product search feature, adding support for the suggestedAge property as an alternative to suggestedMaxAge and suggestedMinAge, and clarified the list of possible values for age ranges.

This is in order to make it easier and more flexible for people to specify age ranges for a product (Also, the previous wording was confusing and didn't map well to the Merchant Center documentation about product age ranges).

April 2023
17

Added return policy information for Product merchant listings

Google updated the Product search feature documentation to detail the properties you can add to make your merchant listing eligible to show return policy information, including return fees and the window of time to return a product.

September 2022
13

Major update to Product structured data documentation

Google has expanded the eligibility for enhanced product experiences in Google Search through the use of Product structured data, which were previously only open to Merchant Center users. To help make the requirements easier to understand, they have also made significant updates to the Product structured data documentation.

The documentation changes include clarification on the different types of shopping experiences available and the result enhancements you can use to help your content to stand out in search results.

They also have expanded the examples to include:

  • Product review page
  • Shopping aggregator page
  • Pros and cons
  • Product page with an offer
  • Product with an offer and shipping details
  • Indicating free shipping
  • Pricing
  • Pricing with unit pricing measures
  • Energy efficiency ratings
August 2022
10

Clarification added to a recommended property for Product rich result

The Product documentation includes the recommended property of gtin (Global Trade Identification Number) as an applicable global identifier. Google added the gtin12 property, which apparently had been supported previously, so this is a documentation change only. They also clarified that you can use the generic gtin property for all GTINs, but they recommend that you use the most specific one if possible.

08

Clarification added to a recommended property for Product rich result

The Product documentation includes the recommended property of gtin (Global Trade Identification Number) as an applicable global identifier. Google updated the documentation to clarify that the GTIN value must be in the numerical form, as they do not support the URL form for GTINs.

05

Pros and cons added as potential enhancement for Product rich results

Google added quite a significant amount of new documentation for the Product search feature, clarifying how you can explicitly define the pros and cons of a product, which can then show up in the search results as an enhancement.

Currently only editorial product review pages are eligible for the pros and cons appearance in Search, not merchant product pages or customer product reviews.

June 2022
17

Clarification to Product documentation

Google updated their documentation for the Product rich result, to clarify that Product rich results are only supported for pages that focus on a single product - including product variants where each product variant has a distinct URL.

January 2022
20

Note added to documentation for Product rich result

Google added a small note to the structured data type definitions for Product, to clarify how to markup a Car:

"Currently Car is not supported automatically as a subtype of Product. So for now, you will need to include both Car and Product types if you would like to attach ratings to it and be eligible for the Search feature."

June 2021
08

Updated recommended property for Product rich result

When marking up Product data, as a recommended property you can include a nested Offer. One of the recommended properties for Offer is availability, which allows you to specify the current stock availability of the item. Google have now updated this property to allow BackOrder as an allowed value.

04

Updated recommended properties for Product rich result

Google added the recommended property of gtin (Global Trade Identification Number) as an applicable global identifier. The gtin property generalizes the earlier gtin8, gtin13 and gtin14 properties (which are also still supported by Google).

Separately, the documentation was also updated to clarify that isbn is only a valid property on Book.

January 2021
22

Price drop added as a potential enhancement for Product rich results

If you include a specific price (not a range) in your Product structured data, Google will now automatically calculate when a price has dropped (based on the running historical average of your product's pricing). In their example, Google show this as 'Price: $200 (typically $300)'.

Currently only available in the US, in English, on both desktop and mobile devices.

September 2020
22

Shipping details support added as a potential enhancement for Product rich results

You can now add shipping costs and estimated delivery timeframes, which can appear in the Overview and Stores tabs for a specific product result. Currently only available in the US, in English, and on mobile devices.

July 2020
16

Clarified that Product markup is only valid on specific product pages

Guidelines update to clarify that Product rich results are only supported for single product pages, rather than pages with a list of products (e.g. ecommerce category pages). Also made significant changes to the data type definitions, adding in Offer and AggregateOffer.

May 2020
15

Clarification on Product documentation regarding Google Shopping tab

Added a note to clarify that Product markup does not make your products eligible for Google Shopping results, you need to provide a feed through Google Merchant Center for that.

March 2020
05

New required properties for Product rich result

In the Product structured data documentation, clarified that one of the following properties is required: review, aggregateRating, offers. Changed the expected type for brand to be Brand or Organization (Thing is still accepted).

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