merchant listings structured data

Google splits Product structured data into two experience classes, and the distinction drives everything. A merchant listing applies when the shopper can buy the item directly from you, the seller. A product snippet applies when your page is not the point of sale (a review site or aggregator). Merchant listings unlock the richer treatment: eligibility for popular products, the shopping knowledge panel, and Google Images, not just a review-stars snippet. (Eligibility for the Shopping tab is a separate track handled through Google Merchant Center data, not by this markup alone.)

What the markup needs

At minimum, Product needs name, image, and an offers block, and the nested Offer needs priceCurrency plus a price (or priceSpecification.price). Google states plainly that, unlike product snippets, merchant listing experiences require a price greater than zero. That rule, plus the page being the point of sale, is what separates a merchant listing from a plain snippet.

Recommended fields do the real lifting: availability, itemCondition, shippingDetails, hasMerchantReturnPolicy, aggregateRating, brand, and gtin. Google also documents category (free text or a Google Product Category code) and sale-price timing via validFrom / validThrough on the offer, so a discount can show with a start and end date.

Example skeleton:

{
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "...",
  "image": ["..."],
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "price": "29.99",
    "priceCurrency": "USD",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock"
  }
}

Validate with the Rich Results Test, then watch the Merchant listings report in Search Console for coverage errors that quietly strip eligibility.