Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Schema markup concerning category pages on an ecommerce site
-
We are adding json+ld data to an ecommerce site and myself and one of the other people working on the site are having a minor disagreement on things. What it comes down to is how to mark up the category page. One of us says it needs to be marked up with as an Itempage, https://schema.org/ItemPage The other says it needs to be marked up as products, with multiple product instances in the schema, https://schema.org/Product
The main sticking point on the Itemlist is that Itemlist is a child of intangible, so there is a feeling that should be used for things like track listings or other arbitrary data.
-
Here's what I came up with: Validator Result.
Note that there's no guarantee this will pass muster with Google since they've said that the Product schema is for use on "a product page that describes a single product"
Here's an official response.
-
Are there any official decisions? I'm also considering adding schema markup to category pages. After running a competitor analysis I noticed this is something that I nor my competitor have in practice. So, I figured this will help my ranking for category pages. However, our product lists are frequently updated. So, would it be best if I went with https://schema.org/ItemPage, and if I went with https://schema.org/Product would I have to update the schema when there are changes in the product list.
-
Which did you end up going with?
-
The load time is not an issue really since it is just text data and only about 20 products. We have a nifty setup actually, we use Algolia to display the products on the category page, we are just making a double call to Algolia before the page render and taking their json array and modifying it into what is needed.
If you run this page through the Structured data testing tool, https://www.ebay.com/b/Fine-Jewelry/4196/bn_2408477 this is what one of us is proposing. See how the tool does not break each into a product node.
At the other time this is a page that the other is proposing, https://www.apple.com/shop/mac/mac-accessories It breaks the products into nodes. (albeit there are errors that can be fixed with the pricing)
I think this better illustrates the issue.
-
Logan when I grow up I want to be like you... jejeje is a joke but as, I see you are very active member of the community and always your answers are clear and concise.
Good for you
-
Hi there,
I haven't heard of using product markup on category pages until reading your question. It's a good idea and while researching I came across this other thread from a couple years ago: https://moz.com/community/q/google-rich-snippets-in-e-commerce-category-pages
My main concern is that most ecomm category pages have a lot of products showing by default, and if you've got a snippet of JSON+LD for each of those, you're going to hurt your page speeds. Just something to be mindful of and monitor if you do decide to go this route.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to update Schema markup code to all pages of my website ?
Hi all i have a website with 1k+ pages and i have schema markup code for reviews and FAQ's, so need help in knowing how to update code for all pages in one go without using tag manager as updating to all pages manually is similar to impossible, let me know is there any way out to achieve the results and my website is built on word-press, awaiting for earliest reply......... Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atiagr1232 -
For FAQ Schema markup, do we need to include every FAQ that is on the page in the markup, or can we use only selected FAQs?
The website FAQ page we are working on has more than 50 FAQs. FAQ Schema guidelines say the markup must be an exact match with the content. Does that mean all 50+ FAQs must be in the mark-up? Or does that mean the few FAQs we decided to put in the markup are an exact match?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PKI_Niles0 -
404 Errors flaring on nonexistent or unpublished pages – should we be concerned for SEO?
Hello! We keep getting "critical crawler" notifications on Moz because of firing 404 codes. We've checked each page and know that we are not linking to them anywhere on our site, they are not published and they are not indexed on Google. It's only happened since we migrated our blog to Hubspot so we think it has something to do with the test pages their developers had set up and that they are just lingering in our code somewhere. However, we are still concerned having these codes fire implies negative consequences for our SEO. Is this the case? Should we be concerned about these 404 codes despite the pages from those URLs not actually existing? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DebFF
Chloe0 -
Ecommerce: A product in multiple categories with a canonical to create a ‘cluster’ in one primary category Vs. a single listing at root level with dynamic breadcrumb.
OK – bear with me on this… I am working on some pretty large ecommerce websites (50,000 + products) where it is appropriate for some individual products to be placed within multiple categories / sub-categories. For example, a Red Polo T-shirt could be placed within: Men’s > T-shirts >
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AbsoluteDesign
Men’s > T-shirts > Red T-shirts
Men’s > T-shirts > Polo T-shirts
Men’s > Sale > T-shirts
Etc. We’re getting great organic results for our general T-shirt page (for example) by clustering creative content within its structure – Top 10 tips on wearing a t-shirt (obviously not, but you get the idea). My instinct tells me to replicate this with products too. So, of all the location mentioned above, make sure all polo shirts (no matter what colour) have a canonical set within Men’s > T-shirts > Polo T-shirts. The presumption is that this will help build the authority of the Polo T-shirts page – this obviously presumes “Polo Shirts” get more search volume than “Red T-shirts”. My presumption why this is the best option is because it is very difficult to manage, particularly with a large inventory. And, from experience, taking the time and being meticulous when it comes to SEO is the only way to achieve success. From an administration point of view, it is a lot easier to have all product URLs at the root level and develop a dynamic breadcrumb trail – so all roads can lead to that one instance of the product. There's No need for canonicals; no need for ecommerce managers to remember which primary category to assign product types to; keeping everything at root level also means there no reason to worry about redirects if product move from sub-category to sub-category etc. What do you think is the best approach? Do 1000s of canonicals and redirect look ‘messy’ to a search engine overtime? Any thoughts and insights greatly received.0 -
Do I have to optimize every page on my site?
Hi guys I run my own photography webstie (www.hemeravisuals.co.uk Going through the process optimizing my page for seo. I have one question I have a few gallery pages with no text etc? Do I still have to optimize these ? Would it rank my site lower if they weren't optimized? And how can i do this sucessfully with little text on these pages ( I have indepth text on these subjects on my services & pricing pages? Kind Regards Cam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hemeravisuals0 -
Date of page first indexed or age of a page?
Hi does anyone know any ways, tools to find when a page was first indexed/cached by Google? I remember a while back, around 2009 i had a firefox plugin which could check this, and gave you a exact date. Maybe this has changed since. I don't remember the plugin. Or any recommendations on finding the age of a page (not domain) for a website? This is for competitor research not my own website. Cheers, Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MBASydney0 -
Schema markup for video playlists?
We're adding schema markup for all of our videos, but some videos exist only in a playlist (all integrated into one URL, and loaded after a javascript call). Per Google: "Make sure that your video and schema.org markup are visible without executing any JavaScript or Flash." https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2413309?hl=en So we know the current implementation won't work for schema markup... What's the best practice for adding schema markup for video playlists? Should we host all of these videos on individual URLs (but then they appear twice) or is there some other workaround?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Dynamic pages - ecommerce product pages
Hi guys, Before I dive into my question, let me give you some background.. I manage an ecommerce site and we're got thousands of product pages. The pages contain dynamic blocks and information in these blocks are fed by another system. So in a nutshell, our product team enters the data in a software and boom, the information is generated in these page blocks. But that's not all, these pages then redirect to a duplicate version with a custom URL. This is cached and this is what the end user sees. This was done to speed up load, rather than the system generate a dynamic page on the fly, the cache page is loaded and the user sees it super fast. Another benefit happened as well, after going live with the cached pages, they started getting indexed and ranking in Google. The problem is that, the redirect to the duplicate cached page isn't a permanent one, it's a meta refresh, a 302 that happens in a second. So yeah, I've got 302s kicking about. The development team can set up 301 but then there won't be any caching, pages will just load dynamically. Google records pages that are cached but does it cache a dynamic page though? Without a cached page, I'm wondering if I would drop in traffic. The view source might just show a list of dynamic blocks, no content! How would you tackle this? I've already setup canonical tags on the cached pages but removing cache.. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0