Through the use of structured data, Google increased the range of users who are eligible for Merchant Listing search experiences and product snippets. Merchants, product review websites, and product information aggregator websites are all impacted by this move.
Google said that for users to qualify for results with rich products, Merchant Center feeds are no longer required.
According to Google, there are two additional reports that has been added to Google Search Console.
“Initially, product snippets in Google search results were primarily powered by schema.org Product structured data, and merchant listing experiences were primarily powered by product details supplied via a Google Merchant Center feed,” Google said on their blog post on September 13, 2022.
Now, businesses without Google Merchant Center accounts that provide product data on websites can qualify for merchant listing opportunities. Google also reported that the recent improvements to product-related attributes and types in schema.org for topics like clothes sizing and energy efficiency ratings have contributed to this increased eligibility.
Meanwhile, Google said if the user is an online retailer, they should check the merchant listings report for their product-selling pages and the product snippets report if the user posts product reviews on non-product-selling pages. Users should also review the Product snippets report if they don’t sell things online but publish pages with Product structured data.