As part of their mission of becoming a "knowledge engine" instead of just providing search results, Google recently added a Price Drop appearance to their product structured data help documentation. This new feature displays price drop information in search results. Currently only available in the U.S., it will allow pages to be more informative for shoppers. Here is an example of a price drop rich result in action:
Rich results make products stand out in SERPs, which encourages people to click and learn more. Google also publishes developer pages that aid e-commerce website developers who want to structure data and make it eligible for rich results. Structured data shows shipping schedules, review stars, images of the product, and now, price drop information. Here are some reasons why rich results matter, and why you should think of them in your content marketing strategy.
When you first visit Google's developers' guide, your first impression might be that there is a lot to digest about it. Optimizing pages for schema markup and documentation requires its own post; in this article, we shall focus on Product rich results and related types.
This kind of rich result lets customers learn at a glance what they need to know if they want to buy a particular item on the day that they search. It shows the product rating, a meta description of the item, the current price, and price drop information, if applicable. It also displays a photo of the item and whether the item is currently in stock.
Frequently used together with product schema markup, review snippets are short excerpts of ratings or reviews from a website. Reviews are valuable for establishing authority, and many companies use it in their content marketing strategy. It combines rating scores from different reviewers; in the example above, you can see that the Seattle pizza place featured has an average of 4.3 out of five stars, according to reviews from 562 individuals. Review snippets can affect a user's final decision. As such, including it in the schema markup for a product or service matters. You can add snippets to books, courses, events, local business websites, movies, products, recipes, and apps.
Shipping information is another update for Product schema documentation. It helps people see estimated delivery timeframes for a product, which could help them plan their purchases. Companies include this in their schema markup processes and include data based on their shipping location and policies. The shipping details for an item shows up in the Stores and Overview tabs when you search for a specific product. Note, though, that this enhancement is only available in the U.S. and for websites in English, like price drop information. Also, you can only view it through mobile devices.
The price drop enhancement benefits e-commerce businesses because it gives people more reasons to check out specific products. For example, if you have too much inventory of a specific item and want to offload some of it, this rich result snippet could convince people to buy it. The price change would also catch a lot more people's attention, especially if the product has a high rating and a significant price drop. This rich result allows you to make a low price impression in search results, making your products stand out on a page.
Product-based rich results provide users with a detailed overview of an item, including shipping, reviewer ratings, availability, and price. If you want your products to display rich results when users search for them online, here are some things you should do.
First, use schema markup for specific products. Do not apply it to an entire category or a list of products. For example, "board games for kids" is not a specific product, so you cannot use it in your schema markup documentation. Also, note that product rich results only support pages focused on one item and that Google does not support schema documentation for adult-related products.
Furthermore, if you want to include product information for Google Image Search results, you have a whole other list of things to do. If you want your product information in the rich image viewer, you must include properties like priceCurrency, the product's name, and the current price. To ensure that your product also shows in the Related Items feature, you need to input the product name, price, priceCurrency, and availability.
An e-commerce website would benefit from Google's latest enhancement to schema markup documentation. Price drop information, especially for budget-conscious audiences, could be the one factor that helps them decide to add your product to their cart today. You could also learn more about what makes a successful e-commerce website by partnering with search engine optimization experts.
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