Providing Better Product Information For Shoppers

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information, and organizing product information for shoppers and retailers is an essential part of this mission. In the last year, we’ve introduced several new experiences that enable brands and retailers to list their products for free on Google, whether that’s on Google Search through a product knowledge panel or on the Shopping tab.

To best help users find your content and products in Search, we recommend that websites clearly identify products mentioned.

In the following sections we provide guidelines for manufacturers, retailers, and publishers on how to ensure that Google understands the products they are selling or referencing.

How Google identifies products online and offline

Google relies on accurate and trusted product data to precisely identify products that are available for shoppers.

We recommend providing clear product identification, as this helps Google to match offers to products, and to match products to relevant search queries. You can improve Google’s understanding of products by using unique product identifiers like Global Trade Item Number (GTIN™), Manufacturer Part Numbers (MPNs), and brand names. When using product identifiers, we recommend that the identifiers follow these best practices:

  • Uniqueness: Each product should have a unique identifier that can consistently and accurately be shared across the ecosystem and identify a product in both the physical and digital worlds of commerce.
  • Verifiability: Identity of a product (for example, who is the manufacturer) and other product data should be verifiable through a trusted source. This allows marketplaces to verify that product data is accurate and complete through global registries, the organizations that issued and manage the identifiers.
  • Global Reach: With ecommerce making the world more connected, relying on an identification system that can be used across the ecosystem globally will help keep product identification seamless for stakeholders in all countries.

Google adopted use of GTINs as the standard in 2015 so that retailers could reach more customers online.

For products that are sold through a variety of sellers and marketplaces, registering products with the GS1 Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) System provides internationally recognized standard identifiers for unique identification of products both in physical stores and on e-commerce platforms. Registration makes it possible for consumers to identify the source of the product.

Tips for brands and manufacturers

Brands and manufacturers can submit product data through Google Manufacturer Center for free, and as part of this process, share the product information to uniquely identify the products to Google. Below are some tips to ensure that Google understands the data that you are providing:

  • Ensure your products have GTINs: Your products must have unique Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) to use Manufacturer Center. To learn how to assign GTINs to your products, visit the GS1 website in your local region.
  • Don’t reuse product identifiers: GTINs should never be shared across multiple products; a single product should map clearly to a single GTIN. Reuse of GTINs can cause marketplace catalog data to become out of date and inconsistent, creating confusion. By obtaining product identifiers from unauthorized sources (for example, identifiers sold through bankruptcy proceedings), you run the risk of establishing identity on the foundation of a previously registered product or company.
  • Follow best practices for product identifiers for custom products: In certain situations (for example, artisan products, customizable products, or one-off products), a brand can adopt a proprietary approach to solve product identity by managing its products with unique Stock Keeping Unit numbers (SKUs) or Manufacturer Part Numbers (MPNs). The key here is for manufacturers to incorporate the principles around uniqueness, verifiability and global reach to ensure the benefits of having product identifiers materialize.

Tips for retailers and 3rd-party sellers 

Retailers should ensure accurate product identification on their websites. In addition to general guidelines around GTIN, Google recommends:

  • Submit high quality product data: Submit structured data to Google in a product feed or add structured data markup to your website.
  • Provide a GTIN, when GTINs exist: Retailers must provide GTINs when they’re selling products that have GTINs. The GTIN can be included in both the product feed as well as the page’s structured data. If a product does not have a GTIN, retailers and 3rd-party sellers should rely on brand and manufacturer parts numbers to identify the product.
  • Use valid and unique GTINs: Don’t reuse existing GTINs for a new product. Retailers should not invent GTINs and should not register their own GTINs with GS1, unless they are also the manufacturer of the product.

Tips for online publishers 

When publishers create content, like reviewing products or sharing the latest deals for a given product, it’s important that the products in those reviews be accurately identified. This allows users to find those reviews when searching for products on Google. Google recommends:

  • Use exact product names: Publishers should mention the exact name of the products that are mentioned on the page. This makes it easier for users, and search engines, to understand exactly which product is referenced.
  • Use structured data: We recommend adding structured data, including the GTIN, when reviewing products. This makes it easier for search engines to better understand when to show your pages in search.
  • Use valid and unique GTINs: GTINs should never be invented or “borrowed” from other products just to provide a GTIN identifier on the content.

Product identity is critical in commerce because it ensures that businesses and consumers accurately understand the origin and unique identity of a product. This also applies to the web and Google Search, where an accurate understanding of a product helps to show the right product to the right user at the right time.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Options For Retailers To Control How Their Crawled Product Information Appears On Google

Earlier this year Google launched a new way for shoppers to find clothes, shoes and other retail products on Search in the U.S. and recently announced that free retail listings are coming to product knowledge panels on Google Search. These new types of experiences on Google Search, along with the global availability of rich results for products, enable retailers to make information about their products visible to millions of Google users, for free.

The best way for retailers and brands to participate in this experience is by annotating the product information on their websites using schema.org markup or by submitting this information directly to Google Merchant Center. Retailers can refer to our documentation to learn more about showing products for free on surfaces across Google or adding schema.org markup to a website.

While the processes above are the best way to ensure that product information will appear in this Search experience, Google may also include content that has not been marked up using schema.org or submitted through Merchant Center when the content has been crawled and is related to retail. Google does this to ensure that users see a wide variety of products from a broad group of retailers when they search for information on Google.

While we believe that this approach positively benefits the retail ecosystem, we recognize that some retailers may prefer to control how their product information appears in this experience. This can be done by using existing mechanisms for Google Search, as covered below.

Controlling your preview preferences

There are a number of ways that retailers can control what data is displayed on Google. These are consistent with changes announced last year that allow website owners and retailers specifically to provide preferences on which information from their website can be shown as a preview on Google. This is done through a set of robots meta tags and an HTML attribute.

Here are some ways you can implement these controls to limit your products and product data from being displayed on Google:

nosnippet robots meta tag

Using this meta tag you can specify that no snippet should be shown for this page in search results. It completely removes the textual, image and rich snippet for this page on Google and removes the page from any free listing experience.

max-snippet:[number] robots meta tag

This meta tag allows you to specify a maximum snippet length, in characters, of a snippet for your page to be displayed on Google results. If the structured data (e.g. product name, description, price, availability) is greater than the maximum snippet length, the page will be removed from any free listing experience.

max-image-preview:[setting] robots meta tag

This meta tag allows you to specify a maximum size of image preview to be shown for images on this page, using either nonestandard, or large.

data-nosnippet HTML attribute

This attribute allows you to specify a section on your webpage that should not be included in a snippet preview on Google. When applied to relevant attributes for offers (price, availability, ratings, image) removes the textual, image and rich snippet for this page on Google and removes the listing from any free listing experiences.

Additional notes on these preferences:

  • The above preferences do not apply to information supplied via schema.org markup on the page itself. The schema.org markup needs to be removed first, before these opt-out mechanisms can become active.
  • The opt-out preferences do not apply to product data submitted through Google Merchant Center, which offers specific mechanisms to opt-out products from appearing on surfaces across Google.

Use of mechanisms like nosnippet and data-nosnippet only affect the display of data and eligibility for certain experiences. Display restrictions don’t affect the ranking of these pages in Search. The exclusion of some parts of product data from display may prevent the product from being shown in rich results and other product results on Google.

We hope these options make it easier for you to maximize the value you get from Search and achieve your business goals. These options are available to retailers worldwide and will operate the same for results we display globally. For more information, check out our developer documentation on meta tags.

Should you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us, or drop by our webmaster help forums.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog