Google Enhances Organization Structured Data for Merchant Returns
Google has quietly updated its Organization structured data documentation to address concerns regarding merchant returns. The changes were made to clarify two key points and respond to feedback about ambiguities in the previous version.
Organization Structured Data and Merchant Returns
The recent update to Google’s Organization structured data now allows for the inclusion of a merchant return policy. This update enables websites to specify a sitewide return policy within their structured data.
The initial motivation behind this update was to streamline the process of defining and managing general return policies for entire websites. Google stated,
“Adding support for Organization-level return policies
What: Added documentation on how to specify a general return policy for an Organization as a whole.
Why: This makes it easier to define and maintain general return policies for an entire site.”
However, the update raised questions about how Google would handle cases where a website has both a sitewide return policy and individual product-specific policies.
What Takes Precedence?
In response to these concerns, Google’s new documentation clarifies that in cases where both sitewide and product-specific return policies are provided in the structured data, Google will prioritize the product-level policy. The documentation states,
“If you choose to provide both organization-level and product-level return policy markup, Google defaults to the product-level return policy markup.”
Furthermore, Google also updated its documentation to address the hierarchy of merchant return policies in cases where both structured data and merchant feed data are utilized. The revised documentation reaffirms that merchant feed data takes precedence over structured data. The previous documentation stated,
“If you choose to use both markup and settings in Merchant Center, Google will only use the information provided in Merchant Center for any products submitted in your Merchant Center product feeds, including automated feeds.”
The updated documentation now includes additional wording to clarify this point, stating,
“If you choose to use both markup (whether at the organization-level or product-level, or both) and settings in Merchant Center, Google will only use the information provided in Merchant Center for any products submitted in your Merchant Center product feeds, including automated feeds.”
For further details, you can access the newly updated Organization structured data documentation here.
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