The new structured data for product variants uses the Schema.org ProductGroup type in addition to Product structured data.

Benefits of Implementing Product Variant Structured Data

There are many products in the market with variants. For example, clothes can come in different colours and sizes. Phones can come in different capacities, colours, and models. The implementation of this new structured data for product variants brings advantages to both eCommerce sites and their users by:

• More precisely showcasing product offerings in search results, highlighting diverse variations such as size, color, and patterns.
• Better supporting the complex product variant scenarios for eCommerce sites and potentially increasing visibility for the diverse range of products they offer directly in the SERP.
• Improving user experience and click-through rates through offering more comprehensive product details.

Additionally, as specific, long-tail keywords become more prominent in search, this markup can help your product variants stand out. For example, if someone searches “navy blue long sleeve shirt size small,” a clothing retail site’s product variant that best fits this query could show up as a product rich result.

Prior to these changes, there was no easy way to differentiate product variants within product markup. Historically, the Schema App team tackled this problem by:

• Identifying variable pricing on a product with AggregateOffer,
• Identifying each variant as an individual Offer, with a different sku, or
• Listing each variant as an individual ProductModel to identify different colors, sizes, etc.

However, Google has expanded Product Variant Structured Data, which can help us overcome the previous challenge of dealing with product variants.

You can read this GitHub issue for more information on what sparked these changes.

In this article, we will specifically focus on the changes introduced with Product Variant Structured Data and how you can implement these changes to your eCommerce site.

Product Variant Structured Data Overview

Product variants must be grouped under a single identified “parent” product. To support this, Google introduced three new properties within the Schema.org ProductGroup type:

1. hasVariant – to nest Product variants under their parent ProductGroup
2. variesBy – Indicates the property by which the variants in a ProductGroup vary, e.g. their size or color
3. productGroupID – the ID, aka “parent sku” of the ProductGroup

Google also added a new property, isVariantOf, to the Product structured data. The isVariantOf property indicates the type of product a variant is associated with, and Google has clarified that this property supports product variants with distinct URLs.

Required and Recommended Properties for Product Variant Structured Data

To properly mark up information about your product variant within your page content, use the following required properties within the ProductGroup type. Additionally, we recommend including as many of the recommended properties as applicable to your page content.

Required: name.

Recommended: aggregateRating, brand, description, hasVariant, productGroupID, review, url, variesBy.

Refer to Google’s Structured Data Documentation for a comprehensive guideline for the required and recommended properties for Product Variant structured data.

Additional Eligibility Requirements

To be eligible for this newly enhanced Product rich result, you must also abide by the following guidelines written and established by Google:

• Each variant must have a unique ID in its corresponding structured data markup (like a sku, for example).
• Each product group must have a unique ID in its corresponding structured data markup, specified with the inProductGroupWithID property in variant Product properties or the productGroupID property in the ProductGroup property.
• Be sure to add Product structured data in addition to the product variant properties, following the list of required properties for merchant listings (or product snippets).
• For single-page sites, there must be only one distinct canonical URL for the overall ProductGroup that all variants belong to. Typically this is the base URL that leads to a page without a variant pre-selected, for example: https://www.example.com/winter_coat. Note: This doesn’t apply to multi-page sites as there is no single canonical URL representing the ProductGroup property (since the variants are distributed across equally important pages).
• For multi-page sites, each page must have full and self-contained markup for the entities defined on that page (meaning, off-page entities shouldn’t be necessary to fully understand the markup on the page itself).
• The site must be able to preselect each variant directly with a distinct URL (using URL query parameters), for example, https://www.example.com/winter_coat/size=small&color=green. This allows Google to crawl and identify each variant. Preselecting each variant includes showing the right image, price, and availability, as well as allowing the user to add the variant to the cart.

Marking Up Single-Page vs. Multi-Page Product Variants

Most eCommerce sites have two design types for their pages – Single-page and multi-page.

Single-page is when all variants are present on a single page without jumping to an alternative page for each variant (typically through query parameters).

Multi-page is when variants of the same product are accessible on separate pages.

Your variants can be:

• nested under ProductGroup markup, or
• be separate and unnested from the ProductGroup.

We typically recommend nesting your markup because it is a more accurate representation of the content on your page and its relationship to other products on your site. Nesting your markup can also help you develop a more robust content knowledge graph for your site.

The Product Variant rich result result uses properties like sku, gtin, and productGroupID to differentiate between individual products and their parent Product Group. At Schema App, our Editor and Highlighter will automatically generate identifiers in the form of @id for each entity in your markup, making it easier to query your Product data alongside other entities in your knowledge graph.

Depending on how your specific site is set up, how you mark up your product variants will differ. See Google’s examples and documentation for specific guidelines on how to markup your product variants.

Implement Product Variant Structured Data On Your Site

With constant updates and additions to Google’s Structured Data Documentation, having an agile and dynamic Schema Markup strategy and solution is critical.

The Schema App Highlighter ensures the dynamic and continuous updating of your site’s Schema Markup, aligning it with internal content changes and adjustments to Google’s structured data requirements and recommendations. This agility helps you stay competitive in search, as outdated Schema Markup can compromise your eligibility for targeted rich results.

Want to learn more about Schema App’s solution? Click here to get started.

The post Google Expands Structured Data Support for Product Variants appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

Rich Result Changes in October 2022

Product, Reviews and Video are steady

After a turbulent last few months, we are happy to report that we are seeing growth in Product rich results, and steady increases in clicks on Review Snippets and Video rich results. It is definitely a relief to see some calming results after the stormy summer.

We are also happy to start to be able to share some industry data. In 2022, we’ve seen the most rich results being awarded to our Enterprise customers in the area of Video, Product and FAQ.

Data source: Schema App – Schema Performance Analytics

FAQ Rich Results Continue to Change

FAQ is one of the rich results that has had significant fluctuations this year. We continued to see an impact on the FAQ rich results, which is congruent with other reports in the industry.

52.17% of our customers saw a drop in clicks for their FAQ rich results in the October however, impressions are increasing. The decrease in clicks is subtle, but not growing with impressions. We are seeing this across industries and are monitoring it closely to be able to attribute it to a specific strategy or content approach.

Data source: Schema App – Schema Performance Analytics

Other SEOs have observed this similar trend occurring in October but across a wider time frame. Is this the result of the October 2022 Spam update? The rollout was completed on October 21st, so the timing is off.

Is Google showing fewer FAQ rich results and maybe other results recently? https://t.co/F1idQOaN6J via @randymajors and @RankRanger pic.twitter.com/KSlXbV08wb

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) October 25, 2022

Barry for the win, with additional insight that another algorithm change had occurred on October 28th. This aligns more with the data we are seeing. There are additional changes going on with Google’s algorithm AFTER the spam update, and these changes are specifically impacting FAQ clicks.

Google search ranking algorithm update or adjustment on October 28th (unconfirmed) https://t.co/NfejjTKS4Y pic.twitter.com/mGmFa6olwK

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) November 1, 2022

@rustybrick It seems Google drastically reduced showing FAQ Rich Results in SER across the board about the same time as the Oct 19 spam rollout. Checked several queries on both desktop and mobile and only saw 1 site with a few FAQs appear. Any confirmation of this? Policy change?

— Randy Majors (@randymajors) October 24, 2022

Source: Marie Haynes Report

The good news is that the FAQ rich result has grown overall in 2022, and the early days of November are showing hopeful results. We’ll be monitoring performance week-over-week to see if there is any correlation with content or industry.

Data source: Schema App – Schema Performance Analytics

Google Updates in October 2022

Schema.org V15 Released with more properties for Products

Schema.org released another version with a focus on adding new properties in pending for products. One of the new properties to highlight is the positiveNotes and negativeNotes for use on Product. This property allows users to showcase the pros and cons of a product, and was created in support of a new structured data feature announced in August for Product Reviews.

Good news! Schema App already supports Schema.org v15 if you want to try out the new pros and cons new search feature.

Provide a site name on Google by adding WebSite Structured Data

When Google lists a page on the search engine results page, the result shows the name of the site that the page is from – also known as the site name.

Previously, Google would automatically generate a site name by using sources such as

• Content in <title> elements
• Heading elements, such as <h1> elements
• Og:site_name

This October, Google announced that you can indicate your preferred site name by adding WebSite Structured Data. The site names are currently supported at a domain level, and not at the subdomain or subdirectory level.  

These changes indicate Google’s increased use of Structured Data as a key source of information. 

New Image Structured Data Properties

Google has added 3 new Structured Data properties – creditText, creator and copyrightNotice – that can be used with the ImageObject type to provide support for image credits, copyright and creator information. 

“Previously, you could only provide image credit information with IPTC photo metadata.”

By adding these Structured Data properties, web publishers can simplify the way they add creator data and add it in a scalable way across their sites. 

According to Schema.org, this is what each property is for:  

• creditText: Text that can be used to credit person(s) and/or organization(s) associated with a published Creative Work.
• creator: The creator/author of this CreativeWork. This is the same as the Author property for CreativeWork.
• copyrightNotice: Text of a notice appropriate for describing the copyright aspects of this Creative Work, ideally indicating the owner of the copyright for the Work.”

Unlike the IPTC photo metadata, you will need to add Structured Data every time you use the photo on your site. 

What’s interesting about this new use of Structured Data is that it is being used beyond search. This information is helping Google understand the copyright of the image. Are more teams at Google using Structured Data beyond search features? Only time will tell. 

To do machine learning, Google needs to broaden its data sources. They now get data from their crawls, Merchant Center, user clicks, and Structured Data.

Measure ROI of Schema Markup using Schema Performance Analytics

One of the things we love about Schema Markup is that you can attribute clicks directly to this nerdy SEO strategy. To help our customers measure the impact, we’ve recently released our Schema Performance Analytics Page-Level Reporting Dashboard.

This new Page Level Report combines data from Google Search Console and the Schema App Highlighter and Editor, to provide users with more granular page-level insights on their Schema Markup performance. 

Users can also filter their data by groups of URLs to better understand how the Schema Markup is performing for different lines of business or departments. This allows our customers to better measure the ROI of Schema Markup on each business unit and the impact SEO has on their business outcomes. 

Read more about Schema Performance Analytics Page Level Report on our blog.

Conclusion

This last quarter, we have seen a record number of core algorithm changes from Google. 

We are seeing rich results – like FAQs – fluctuate, which further emphasizes the need for diversity in your Schema Markup portfolio so that you can not only weather these changes but also thrive in them. 

Want to hear more? Listen to Martha’s latest podcast on Voices of Search, on how you can manage your Schema Markup like a financial portfolio. 

The post October 2022 Rich Results Weather Report Update appeared first on Schema App Solutions.

Two key takeaways:

• Search is changing – with Google making updates to the SERP, in Video, FAQ, and Product Rich results.
• Diversify your rich results and manage your Schema Markup to achieve optimal results in changing search landscape. 

Rich Result Changes in September 2022

FAQ Rich Result Changes

This past August, we reported seeing 42% of our customers experience a drop in clicks for their FAQ rich results across mobile and desktop. 

This trend has continued into September as we continue to see 45.88% of our customers drop in clicks for their FAQ rich results in the first two weeks of the month and 43.53% of our customers have continued to see a drop in clicks for their FAQ rich results in the second half of September. To date, we’re seeing this decline affect a wide range of industries. 

Healthcare is one of the industries that took a huge hit. 57% of our healthcare customers saw a further decrease in clicks and impressions this September. Google is no longer awarding the FAQ rich results for Physician pages, resulting in a decline in clicks for their FAQ rich results. However, many of these customers are still getting clicks from the FAQ rich results on their services and blog pages. 

We have yet to identify the cause of the decline for other industries but we do know that Google’s algorithm is constantly changing. FAQ rich results continue to perform, however, organizations should be reviewing their Schema Markup strategy to ensure they have a diversified portfolio of rich results.

This means reviewing the rich results your organization is achieving today and proactively looking for content on your site that is eligible for more types of rich results opportunities. Diversifying your rich results allows your website to keep performing despite Google’s changes and your team can quickly double down when a specific rich result is performing. 

Google preferring Youtube for Video Rich Results

We first observed a sharp decline in clicks and impressions for Video Rich Results in June, where 70% of our customers saw a decrease in the performance of their Video Rich Results on desktop devices. The Video Rich Results started to recover in August until this sudden drop again in September. 

In the first half of September, we saw 41.86% of our customers decline in clicks and a 53.49% decline in impressions for their Video Rich Results compared to the second half of August. 

In addition to the number of customers impacted, we also saw a big change in how Video rich results are showing up in the SERP. Google is preferring Youtube over other providers. 

Could this be a result of Google’s September core update or is it just Google continuing to refine the search experience? Stay tuned to find out. For now, we will continue to monitor the Video rich results every week to see how this trend progresses over time. 

Growth of Impressions for Recipe Rich Results

In August, 83% of our customers reported seeing the impressions for their Recipe rich results grow at an average of 3513% compared to July. 

This September, we are continuing to see an upward trend in the clicks and impressions for Recipe rich results with 60% of our customers seeing growth in impressions for their Recipe rich results. 

Google Updates in September 2022

More Product Search Features can be achieved with Product Schema Markup

On September 13, Google announced that merchants can now be eligible for merchant listing experiences simply by adding Product Schema Markup to their web pages, even if they do not have a Google Merchant Center account. 

This is awesome news! Now instead of just getting review ratings, price and availability, Product Schema Markup can help you achieve new experiences in search. With Google and Amazon battling for product search, we see this as Google’s move towards enabling more products to be shown on the SERP. 

Google currently has two broad categories of experiences:

1. Merchant listing experiences for web pages that allow shoppers to buy a product on the site.
   
   In the past, these merchant listing experiences (Shopping Knowledge panel, Popular products rich result, shopping experiences in Google Images and Google lens) were only open to users with Google Merchant Center accounts and the product details shown in these rich results were supplied from the Google Merchant Center feed.
2. 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).
   
   In the past, these product snippets were powered by schema.org Product Schema Markup. This is now no longer the case.

The Google Merchant Center feeds are no longer necessary for merchants to be eligible for these enhanced Product search features. Google has added more Product Schema properties (i.e. colours, size, material, pattern, audience, hasEnergyConsumptionDetails, etc.), which allows merchants to add more product details to their Schema Markup and achieve the rich results that drive traffic to their site. 

To help you monitor and manage your Product rich results, Google has introduced two new Search Console Reports. 

1. Merchant listing report
   This is a new report that identifies Schema Markup issues for free listing experiences in the search results. Merchants that sell products on their online should use this report.
2. Product snippets report
   This report replaces the previous Product report with adjustments related to the separation of the merchant listing report. The data from the previous Product report is still available within this report. The report identifies Schema Markup issues for product snippets in the search results. Sites that don’t sell products online but still publish pages with Product Schema Markup should use this report.

September Core and Product Review Update

This month, Google rolled out their September Core Update (the second broad core update of the year) and the Product Reviews Update. Both updates came after the Helpful Content Update finished rolling out on September 9, 2022. We have yet to correlate the impact of these updates with the fluctuations in the search results. However, we will continue to monitor and report on any fluctuations we’ve observed.

Google using Structured Data for Machine Learning

Marie Haynes and Alan Kent from Google released a podcast episode on Product Reviews this September. 

In the episode, Alan Kent said “They look at behaviour to decide if the review is helpful. The machine learning then looks at patterns to see if the review is helpful.” 

This wasn’t the first mention of machine learning from Google in the past year. 

In the podcast, “Structured Data what’s it all about” on April 7, 2022, Ryan Levering from Google said, “Most of our features over time migrate to that approach where we ingest it. Maybe we start with one approach where we’re just using ML. And then we eventually add markups so people have control. Or it’s the opposite way around. And we start– we bootstrap with markup in an eco-system approach where people are giving us data. And then we enhance coverage of the feature by adding ML long run.” (Ryan Levering @ 8:34)

To do machine learning, Google needs to broaden its data sources. They now get data from their crawls, Merchant Center, user clicks, and Structured Data.

Conclusion

Google is making a lot of updates to the algorithm and evolving how they are using machine learning to delight the user in their search experience. As a result of these changes, SEOs need to diversify their rich result portfolio, stay agile and be ready to evolve their content and Schema Markup to capitalize on the changes.

Schema Markup (aka Structured Data) helps search engines understand your content because you’re translating it into machine language. With Google relying more on machine learning, Schema Markup will increasingly be of greater importance for sites to communicate with Google’s machines and maintain their visibility on the SERP.

If you haven’t already implemented Schema Markup as part of your SEO strategy, what are you waiting for? Get in touch with us today to learn how Schema App can help your organization stand out in search through Schema Markup.

The post September 2022 Rich Results Weather Report Update appeared first on Schema App Solutions.