During the SEO Office Hours podcast, John Mueller from Google answered a question about how to get more product rich results in search results. John listed four key things to do to get rich results for your product listings:
Product rich results
Product search queries can trigger rich results that display products in a visually rich way, something Google calls a search experience.
Our product search experience includes:
- Product snippets with ratings, reviews, price, and availability information.
- Visual Representation of the Product
- Vendor and Product Knowledge Panels
- Product images in Google image search results
- Enhancing results (reviews, shipping information, etc.)
John Mueller answers questions about Product Rich Results
The questioner wanted to know how to get more “product snippets in Search Console,” but Mueller was stumped because product snippets appear in search results, not in Search Console. So Mueller answered the question in the context of search results.
The questions are:
“How can I increase the number of product snippets in Search Console?”
John Mueller explained that you need to do four things right to qualify for a product rich result.
Mueller responded:
“I’m not sure what you mean… If you’re asking about product rich results, this is tied to pages that are indexed on your site, and it’s not something you can force change.
The page needs to be indexed, it needs to have valid structured data, and our systems need to think that it's worth displaying this structured data.”
According to John Mueller, there are four things you need to do right to qualify for a product rich result:
- The page needs to be indexed
- The page has valid structured data
- Google's system decided it was worth showing.
- Submit your product feed
1. Indexing the page
It can be difficult to index (and rank) pages for some search queries. People who come to me with these kinds of issues tend to have issues with content quality, which stems from using outdated SEO tactics like copying something that already ranks in the SERPs and making it “better.” This often results in content that's not meaningfully different from what Google already ranks.
Page-level and site-level content quality matters: focusing on small value-added pieces of content like better images, helpful charts, and more concise content is much more effective than focusing on keywords or entities.
2. Valid structured data
This is another area that may explain why some sites are missing rich results or not showing at all. Google changes its structured data recommendations and structured data plugins are usually updated to comply with the new guidelines. However, we have seen instances where this doesn't happen. So if you're having issues with rich results, your first stop should be to visit Google's Rich Results Testing Tool.
It's also important to note that having correct structured data does not guarantee that Google will show a rich result for your page, it just makes your page eligible to appear in a rich result.
3. How does Google know if something is worth showing?
This is something Google doesn't mention, but if you've read about the review system, quality guidelines, Google's SEO starter guide, or even the Search Quality Rater Guidelines, that should be more than enough information to answer any questions you may have about the quality of your content.
Google has not explained why they don't show image thumbnails as rich results, or why they don't show products in rich results. In my opinion, debugging is more productive if you reconceptualize the problem as a content quality issue. Images are content. If it's on a page, it's content even if it's not text. Evaluate all content from the perspective of how images, products, etc. will appear in search results. Does it look good as a thumbnail? Is the content unique/helpful/convenient? etc.
4. Merchant Feed
Finally, John Mueller mentioned that merchant feeds are another way to pull products from websites and display them as rich results in Google.
Mueller responded:
“You can also submit a feed to your Merchant Center account and have your products appear there, which is a bit separate and has different requirements. I'll provide a link. A lot of times your CMS or platform will handle this for you, which makes things a bit easier.”
Mueller linked to this page:
Onboarding Guide – Creating a Feed
We also have a separate page on rich snippets that goes into more detail about text snippets.
Product snippet (product, review, offer) structured data
Get rich results for your products on Google
John Mueller lists four ways to get product-rich results in your Google search experience, but it's not always as simple as 1, 2, 3, 4. There are always nuances to be aware of.
Listen to the Google SEO Office Hours podcast at about the 7:00 mark.
Featured Image: Shutterstock/ViDI Studio
