Any SEO thoughts about Google's new Data Highlighter for products?

[SDIM]

After searching around on the web for a while I couldn't find any case studies or interesting posting about Google's new feature to highlight structured data. In Google Webmaster Tools you can now tag your products to be displayed as structured data in Google's search results. Two questions that rose immediately:

1. What effect will Google's new Data Hightlighter for products have on your SEO? Can we expect better CTR's for productspage results in Google? Better conversion rates perhaps? Any case studies that show KPI improvements after using structured data for products?

2. I would love to see some examples in the search results to see what productpages would look like after Data Highlighting it.

Your thoughts or input about this subject will be much appreciated.

[James_T]

Hi SDIM, unfortunately I'm not in a position to be posting specific URL's as these are live client sites. I have noted a few URL's that did get picked up properly showing their product review scores similar to IMDB listings. As demonstrated at: How Rich snippets/schema markup help SEO.

However as I have said it's very picky about actually using the data sets provided, I would recommend using Schema markup in the site template/layout if possible versus relying on Google's highlighting tool.

[SDIM]

I have been testing this on some of my clients accounts, but without no effect so far.

[SDIM]

Hi James, thanks for you feedback. Would you care to share some sample search terms where you ecommerce site did show up with mark-up in the SERP results?

[simon_realbuzz]

Although not related directly to data highlighter for products, I have used data highlighter for events. Like James says, Google seems to have a problem identifying a set even though I've added multiple examples. I terms of performance, it's only been a month or so since it was set up but there has been no discernable impact so far.

[James_T]

I've used the tool on a single domain in a shop environment, unfortunately I've seen little to no effect. I did notice however that Google's tool is relatively poor at picking up it's own highlights once set. This may just be my personal experience with the tool though.

I have on the other hand used schema mark-up on another eCommerce site and seen not only improved CTR, but the SERP results returned have tended to be more accurate and useful (in my eyes) for customers/potential customers.