Google Enhances Merchant Listing SEO

Google has introduced several updates to its Merchant Listing structured data documentation, giving online retailers more ways to improve how their products appear in search results. The update includes a new Category property, additional guidance on sale duration markup, and clearer instructions for providing accurate pricing information.

While not all of the new properties are mandatory, Google recommends using them to improve the quality and accuracy of product listings.

New Category property for products

The biggest addition is a new Category property for Product structured data.

Previously, merchants mainly relied on information submitted through Google Merchant Center feeds to categorise products. The new property allows businesses to include detailed category information directly within their website’s structured data, helping Google better understand each product.

The Category property supports two formats:

Plain text, allowing merchants to create their own custom product categories.
CategoryCode, which links products to Google’s official Product Taxonomy.

Using CategoryCode enables retailers to match the product categories on their website with those already submitted through Merchant Center, creating greater consistency between the two.

Flexible category options

Google’s updated guidance allows merchants to include multiple category values for a single product.

Businesses can combine custom text categories with official Google Product Categories (GPC), giving Google more detailed information about where a product belongs.

When using the CategoryCode format, merchants can identify products using either:

A Google Product Category ID
The full category path from Google’s taxonomy

This provides greater flexibility while improving the accuracy of product classification.

New guidance for sale duration

Google has also expanded its documentation to help merchants specify exactly when promotional prices are active.

The update focuses on three structured data properties:

validFrom
validThrough
priceValidUntil

These properties allow retailers to tell Google when a sale begins and when it ends, helping ensure that promotional pricing shown in search results remains accurate.

Keeping sale prices up to date

The new sale duration guidance is designed to prevent expired offers from continuing to appear in Google Search.

Merchants are encouraged to provide both a start and end date for promotions using the ISO 8601 date format.

Google also recommends including the exact time and time zone to improve accuracy across its systems.

By supplying this information, retailers can reduce the risk of outdated prices appearing in search listings.

Where to add sale information

Google explains that sale duration details can be added in different parts of structured data, depending on how pricing is set up.

If the sale price is listed within the Offer section, merchants can include the validFrom and validThrough (or priceValidUntil) properties there.

If pricing is managed through a PriceSpecification node, the relevant sale dates should be added within that section instead.

Following Google’s recommendations helps ensure promotional pricing is interpreted correctly.

Why these updates matter

The latest Merchant Listing structured data changes are designed to improve the connection between website markup and Merchant Center product feeds.

By allowing category information and sale periods to be defined directly on product pages, Google can display more accurate product details in search results.

The new Category property aligns with the existing product_type and google_product_category attributes used in Merchant Center, while the sale duration properties complement the sale_price_effective_date field.

Benefits for ecommerce SEO

For online retailers, these updates provide another opportunity to improve product visibility in Google Search.

More detailed structured data can help Google better understand products, display accurate pricing information, and improve the overall shopping experience for users.

Although the new properties are largely optional, implementing them could strengthen product listings and support ecommerce SEO by ensuring Google has access to richer and more consistent product data.