Product Schema Markup: Required and Recommended Properties for Google

Product markup is the structured data with the most visible payoff: price, availability, star rating and shipping details can all appear directly in Google Search. It is also the markup with the most rules, because Google runs two separate features on it: product snippets (price and reviews in regular results) and merchant listings (the shopping-style results with images and shipping). This guide covers what each one needs.

The minimum that works

Every product page needs a Product with a name and at least one of offers, review or aggregateRating. In practice you always want offers, because price and availability are what shoppers look at.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "Executive Anvil",
  "image": [
    "https://example.com/photos/anvil-1x1.jpg",
    "https://example.com/photos/anvil-4x3.jpg",
    "https://example.com/photos/anvil-16x9.jpg"
  ],
  "description": "Sleeker than ACME's Classic Anvil, the Executive Anvil is perfect for the business traveller.",
  "sku": "0446310786",
  "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "ACME" },
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "url": "https://example.com/anvil",
    "priceCurrency": "USD",
    "price": 119.99,
    "priceValidUntil": "2027-11-20",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock",
    "itemCondition": "https://schema.org/NewCondition"
  },
  "aggregateRating": { "@type": "AggregateRating", "ratingValue": 4.4, "reviewCount": 89 }
}

Properties Google looks at

Property	Product snippet	Merchant listing	Notes
name	required	required	Must match the visible product name
image	recommended	required	Absolute URLs; several aspect ratios help
offers.price	required for the price snippet	required	A number, not “$119.99”
offers.priceCurrency	required with price	required	ISO 4217 code such as USD, EUR
offers.availability	recommended	required	A schema.org URL such as https://schema.org/InStock
aggregateRating / review	one of these or offers	optional	Ratings must be from real users on your site
brand, sku, gtin	recommended	recommended	Identifiers help Google match the product
offers.shippingDetails	ignored	recommended	Enables the shipping line in listings
offers.hasMerchantReturnPolicy	ignored	recommended	Enables the return line in listings

Merchant listings additionally require that the page sells the product directly: the offer must be yours, with a buy button on the page. Affiliate or comparison pages get product snippets only.

Price done right

price is the field most often broken by templates. The value must be a plain number with a dot as the decimal separator: 119.99, not "119,99", not "$119.99", not "119.99 USD". Put the currency in priceCurrency. If the product has a price range, use AggregateOffer with lowPrice and highPrice instead of inventing a string.

Sale prices are a common trap. Google wants the price the customer pays now in price. If you want to show the old price too, use priceSpecification with a UnitPriceSpecification whose priceType is https://schema.org/ListPrice.

Availability and condition

Use the full schema.org URLs: https://schema.org/InStock, OutOfStock, PreOrder, BackOrder, Discontinued. The bare words are accepted by Google but produce warnings in strict validators and are easy to misspell. The same applies to itemCondition (NewCondition, UsedCondition, RefurbishedCondition).

Keep availability in sync with the stock system. Marking a sold-out product as in stock is a policy violation and can get the rich result removed for the whole site.

Variants

A page that sells one product in several sizes or colours has two valid options. The simple one: a single Product whose offers is an AggregateOffer covering all variants. The precise one: a ProductGroup with hasVariant listing each variant as its own Product with its own sku, size, color and offers. Use the second form if each variant has a distinct price or stock level and its own URL (or URL with a parameter).

Reviews and ratings

aggregateRating needs ratingValue and either reviewCount or ratingCount. The values must come from reviews on your site about this product, and the rating must be visible on the page. Reviews copied from a third-party platform, or a site-wide rating pasted onto every product, are the most common reason a store loses its stars in a manual action.

If you include individual review objects, each needs an author with a name and a reviewRating with a ratingValue.

Mistakes we see most often

1. Price as a string with a currency symbol. Google reads "$119.99" as not-a-number and drops the price.
2. Missing priceCurrency. Price without currency is incomplete; no snippet.
3. Relative image URLs. /img/anvil.jpg fails the image check on most validators and sometimes in Google.
4. availability as free text like "in stock".
5. Empty arrays such as "review": [] left by a template when a product has no reviews. Omit the property instead.
6. One Product block copied to category pages. Category pages should have ItemList, not a fake product.

A site scan finds all of these across a catalogue in minutes: every issue is grouped by type and property, so a broken price template shows up as one line with the list of affected pages, not as five hundred separate errors.