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.
Product schema GSC Error 'offers, review, or aggregateRating should be specified'
-
I do not have a sku, global identifier, rating or offer for my product. Nonetheless it is my product. The price is variable (as it's insurance) so it would be inappropriate to provide a high or low price. Therefore, these items were not included in my product schema. SD Testing tool showed 2 warnings, for missing sku and global identifier.
Google Search Console gave me an error today that said: 'offers, review, or aggregateRating should be specified'
I don't want to be dishonest in supplying any of these, but I also don't want to have my page deprecated in the search results. BUT I DO want my item to show up as a product. Should I forget the product schema? Advice/suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
-
Really interested to see that others have been receiving this too, we have been having this flagged on a couple of sites / accounts over the past month or two
Basically, Google Data Studio's schema error view is 'richer' than that of Google's schema tool (stand-alone) which has been left behind a bit in terms of changing standards. Quite often you can put the pages highlighted by GSC (Google Search Console) into Google's schema tool, and they will show as having warnings only (no errors) yet GSC says there are errors (very confusing for a lot of people)
Let's look at an example:
- https://d.pr/i/xEqlJj.png (screenshot step 1)
- https://d.pr/i/tK9jVB.png (screenshot step 2)
- https://d.pr/i/dVriHh.png (screenshot step 3)
- https://d.pr/i/X60nRi.png (screenshot step 4)
... basically the schema tool separates issues into two categories, errors and warnings
But Google Search Console's view of schema errors, is now richer and more advanced than that (so adhere to GSC specs, not schema tool specs - if they ever contradict each other!)
What GSC is basically saying is this:
"Offers, review and aggregateRating are recommended only and usually cause a warning rather than an error if omitted. However, now we are taking a more complex view. If any one of these fields / properties is omitted, that's okay but one of the three MUST now be present - or it will change from an warning to an error. SO to be clear, if one or two of these is missing, it's not a big deal - but if all three are missing, to us at Google - the product no longer constitutes as a valid product"
So what are the implications of having schema which generates erroneous, invalid products in Google's eyes?
This was the key statement I found from Google:
Google have this document on the Merchant Center (all about Google Shopping paid activity): https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6069143?hl=en-GB
They say: "Valid structured markup allows us to read your product data and enable two features: (1) Automatic item updates: Automatic item updates reduce the risk of account suspension and temporary item disapproval due to price and availability mismatches. (2) Google Sheets Merchant Center add-on: The Merchant Center add-on in Google Sheets can crawl your website and uses structured data to populate and update many attributes in your feed. Learn more about using Google sheets to submit your product data. Prevent temporary disapprovals due to mismatched price and availability information with automatic item updates. This tool allows Merchant Center to update your items based on the structured data on your website instead of using feed-based product data that may be out of date."
So basically, without 'valid' schema mark-up, your Google Shopping (paid results) are much more likely to get rejected at a higher frequency, as Google's organic crawler passes data to Google Shopping through schema (and assumedly, they will only do this if the schema is marked as non-erroneous). Since you don't (well, you haven't said anything about this) use Google Shopping (PLA - Product Listing Ads), this 'primary risk' is mostly mitigated
It's likely that without valid product schema, your products will not appear as 'product' results within Google's normal, organic results. As you know, occasionally product results make it into Google's normal results. I'm not sure if this can be achieved without paying Google for a PLA (Product Listings Ad) for the hypothetical product in question. If webmasters can occasionally achieve proper product listings in Google's SERPs without PLA, e.g like this:
https://d.pr/i/XmXq6b.png (screenshot)
... then be assured that, if your products have schema errors - you're much less likely to get them listed in such a way for for free. In the screenshot I just gave, they are clearly labelled as sponsored (meaning that they were paid for). As such, not sure how much of an issue this would be
For product URLs which rank in Google's SERPs which do not render 'as' products:
https://d.pr/i/aW0sfD.png (screenshot)
... I don't think that such results would be impacted 'as' highly. You'll see that even with the plain-text / link results, sometimes you get schema embedded like those aggregate product review ratings. Obviously if the schema had errors, the richness of the SERP may be impacted (the little stars might disappear or something)
Personally I think that this is going to be a tough one that we're all going to have to come together and solve collectively. Google are basically saying, if a product has no individual review they can read, or no aggregate star rating from a collection of reviews, or it's not on offer (a product must have at least one of these three things) - then to Google it doesn't count as a product any more. That's how it is now, there's no arguing or getting away from it (though personally I think it's pretty steep, they may even back-track on this one at some point due to it being relatively infeasible for most companies to adopt for all their thousands of products)
You could take the line of re-assigning all your products as services, but IMO that's a very bad idea. I think Google will cotton on to such 'clever' tricks pretty quickly and undo them all. A product is a product, a service is a service (everyone knows that)
Plus, if your items are listed as services they're no longer products and may not be eligible for some types of SERP deployment as a result of that
The real question for me is, why is Google doing this?
I think it's because, marketers and SEOs have known for a long time that any type of SERP injection (universal search results, e.g: video results, news results, product results injected into Google's 'normal' results) are more attractive to users and because people 'just trust' Google they get a lot of clicks
As such, PLA (Google Shopping) has been relatively saturated for some time now and maybe Google feel that the quality of their product-based results, has dropped or lowered in some way. It would make sense to pick 2-3 things that really define the contents of a trustworthy site which is being more transparent with its user-base, and then to re-define 'what a product is' based around those things
In this way, Google will be able to reduce the amount of PLA results, reduce the amount of 'noise' they are generating and just keep the extrusions (the nice product boxes in Google's SERPs) for the sites that they feel really deserve them. You might say, well if this could result in their PLA revenue decreasing - why do it? Seems crazy
Not really though, as Google make all their revenue from the ads that they show. If it becomes widely known that Google's product-related search results suck, people will move away from Google (in-fact, they have often quoted Amazon as being their leading competitor, not another search engine directly)
People don't want to search for website links any more. They want to search for 'things'. Bits of info that pop out (like how you can use Google as a calculator or dictionary now, if you type your queries correctly). They want to search for products, items, things that are useful to them
IMO this is just another step towards that goal
Thank you for posting this question as it's helped me get some of my own thoughts down on this matter
-
I had a similar issue as we offer SaaS solutions with various different prices.
How I resolved this problem was by changing the Entity Type from Product to Service. Then you no longer need Sku or product related parameters.
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
-
Schema for blogs
When I run a wordpress blog through the structured data testing tool I see that there is @type hentry. Is this enough for blogs etc? Is this a result of Wordpress adding in this markup? Do you recommend adding @blogposting type and if so why? What benefit to add a specific type of schema? How does it help in blogging? Thanks
Technical SEO | Feb 11, 2019, 6:39 PM | AL123al4 -
What's the best way to handle product filter URLs?
I've been researching and can't find a clear cut answer. Imagine you have a product category page e.g. domain/jeans You've a lot of options as to how to filter the results domain/jeans?=ladies,skinny,pink,10 or domain/jeans/ladies-skinny-pink-10 or domain/jeans/ladies/skinny?=pink,10 And in this how do you handle titles, breadcrumbs etc. Is the a way you prefer to handle filters and why do you do it that way? I'm trying to make my mind up as some very big names handle this differently e.g. http://www.next.co.uk/shop/gender-women-category-jeans/colour-pink-fit-skinny-size-10r VS https://www.matalan.co.uk/womens/shop-by-category/jeans?utf8=✓&[facet_filter][meta.tertiary_category][Skinny]=on&[facet_filter][variants.meta.size][Size+10]=on&[facet_filter][meta.master_colour][Midwash]=on&[facet_filter][min_current_price][gte]=6.0&[facet_filter][min_current_price][lte]=18.0&per=36&sort=
Technical SEO | Jul 12, 2017, 10:55 AM | RodneyRiley0 -
Problems with WooCommerce Product Attribute Filter URL's
I am running a WordPress/WooCommerce site for a client, and Moz is picking up some issues with URL's generated from WooCommerce product attribute filters. For example: ..co.uk/womens-prescription-glasses/?filter_gender=mens&filter_style=full-rim&filter_shape=oval How do I get Google to ignore these filters?
Technical SEO | Sep 20, 2016, 11:12 AM | SushiUK
I am running Yoast Premium, but not sure if this can solve the issue? Product categories are canonicalised to the root category URL. Any suggestions very gratefully appreciated. Thanks Bob0 -
How to deal with duplicated content on product pages?
Hi, I have a webshop with products with different sizes and colours. For each item I have a different URL, with almost the same content (title tag, product descriptions, etc). In order to prevent duplicated content I'am wondering what is the best way to solve this problem, keeping in mind: -Impossible to create one page/URL for each product with filters on colour and size -Impossible to rewrite the product descriptions in order to be unique I'm considering the option to canonicolize the rest of de colours/size variations, but the disadvantage is that in case the product is not in stock it disappears from the website. Looking forward to your opinions and solutions. Jeroen
Technical SEO | Mar 16, 2015, 11:43 AM | Digital-DMG0 -
Duplicate content on Product pages for different product variations.
I have multiple colors of the same product, but as a result I'm getting duplicate content warnings. I want to keep these all different products with their own pages, so that the color can be easily identified by browsing the category page. Any suggestions?
Technical SEO | Apr 14, 2014, 1:10 PM | bobjohn10 -
403 forbidden error how to solve them
hi, i have been using a great tool today called screaming frog which was shown to me by Thomas Zickell when i used the tool i found some worrying things for my site www.in2town.co.uk. what i have found is, i have a large number of 403 forbidden status on my home page and i do not know why here is an example http://www.in2town.co.uk/emmerdale/emmerdale-debbie-hits-rock-bottom it loads fine but on the tool it shows it as an error and shows it as having no meta tags or anything but there is meta tags in there can anyone please let me know how to solve this and why it has happened many thanks
Technical SEO | Jul 5, 2013, 9:47 AM | ClaireH-1848860 -
Are 404 Errors a bad thing?
Good Morning... I am trying to clean up my e-commerce site and i created a lot of new categories for my parts... I've made the old category pages (which have had their content removed) "hidden" to anyone who visits the site and starts browsing. The only way you could get to those "hidden" pages is either by knowing the URLS that I used to use or if for some reason one of them is spidering in Google. Since I'm trying to clean up the site and get rid of any duplicate content issues, would i be better served by adding those "hidden" pages that don't have much or any content to the Robots.txt file or should i just De-activate them so now even if you type the old URL you will get a 404 page... In this case, are 404 pages bad? You're typically not going to find those pages in the SERPS so the only way you'd land on these 404 pages is to know the old url i was using that has been disabled. Please let me know if you guys think i should be 404'ing them or adding them to Robots.txt Thanks
Technical SEO | Jan 20, 2013, 9:53 PM | Prime850 -
Two websites with similar products
I have two websites with similar products with different tld.I have a keywords that is comman in both.One site is at top in google with that keyword and one is not.Can we implement 301 redirect from one domain to another domain for that keyword or google will consider it spammy?Please help me out.
Technical SEO | Jul 3, 2012, 4:09 AM | Alick3000