Schema.org JSON-LD for e-commerce: how to mark up Product, Offer, variants, breadcrumbs and FAQs

Why structured data is a revenue question in e-commerce

Correct markup on a product page produces three concrete results:

• Rich results: price, availability, star rating, shipping cost and delivery time appear in the search result. Google documents higher click-through rates for results carrying this information; in the Rotten Tomatoes case study, pages with structured data saw a 25% higher click-through rate.
• The Shopping tab and Merchant Center: “merchant listing” markup lets your products appear in free listings even without a feed; if you have a feed, Google cross-checks the on-page data against it.
• AI search: Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini try to extract price, stock and variant details from the visible text when they cite a product; JSON-LD removes the ambiguity. Several industry studies report that pages with structured data are cited more often in AI answers.

Two separate experiences in Google product results: product snippets and merchant listings

Since 2022 Google has split product markup into two experiences. Which one you target determines the required fields.

	Product snippet	Merchant listing
Who it is for	Review sites, comparison pages, sellers	Pages that sell the product directly (with an add-to-cart button)
Required	name plus at least one of review, aggregateRating, offers	name, image, offers (with price and priceCurrency)
Recommended	image, description, brand, sku, gtin	availability, shippingDetails, hasMerchantReturnPolicy, aggregateRating, ProductGroup for variants
Output	Rating, price range, availability	Price, stock, shipping, returns, delivery time, Shopping tab listings

For an online store the target is the merchant listing. The rule is simple: you must sell the marked-up product on that page; marking up third-party seller prices as Offers violates the policy.

A complete Product + Offer JSON-LD example (with shipping and returns)

The block below satisfies all of Google’s merchant listing and product snippet requirements for a single-variant product. Keep every value identical to what is visible on the page; Google treats markup of invisible data as spam.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Product",
  "@id": "https://www.example-store.com/products/organic-pine-honey-450g#product",
  "name": "Organic Pine Honey 450 g",
  "image": [
    "https://cdn.example-store.com/pine-honey-1x1.jpg",
    "https://cdn.example-store.com/pine-honey-4x3.jpg",
    "https://cdn.example-store.com/pine-honey-16x9.jpg"
  ],
  "description": "Unfiltered, unheated organic pine honey from the Muğla highlands. Glass jar, 450 g.",
  "sku": "HON-PINE-450",
  "gtin13": "8691234567890",
  "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "Example Honey" },
  "aggregateRating": { "@type": "AggregateRating", "ratingValue": 4.8, "reviewCount": 127 },
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "url": "https://www.example-store.com/products/organic-pine-honey-450g",
    "price": 24.90,
    "priceCurrency": "EUR",
    "priceValidUntil": "2026-12-31",
    "itemCondition": "https://schema.org/NewCondition",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock",
    "seller": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Example Store" },
    "shippingDetails": {
      "@type": "OfferShippingDetails",
      "shippingRate": { "@type": "MonetaryAmount", "value": 0, "currency": "EUR" },
      "shippingDestination": { "@type": "DefinedRegion", "addressCountry": "DE" },
      "deliveryTime": {
        "@type": "ShippingDeliveryTime",
        "handlingTime": { "@type": "QuantitativeValue", "minValue": 0, "maxValue": 1, "unitCode": "DAY" },
        "transitTime":  { "@type": "QuantitativeValue", "minValue": 1, "maxValue": 3, "unitCode": "DAY" }
      }
    },
    "hasMerchantReturnPolicy": {
      "@type": "MerchantReturnPolicy",
      "applicableCountry": "DE",
      "returnPolicyCategory": "https://schema.org/MerchantReturnFiniteReturnWindow",
      "merchantReturnDays": 14,
      "returnMethod": "https://schema.org/ReturnByMail",
      "returnFees": "https://schema.org/FreeReturn"
    }
  }
}
</script>

Three details matter: price must be a number, not text (24.90, not "€24.90"). For image, Google recommends at least 50,000 pixels in 1:1, 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios. availability values must be full URLs: InStock, OutOfStock, PreOrder, BackOrder.

Products with variants: ProductGroup and hasVariant

The most common mistake with size and colour variants is cramming a price range into a single Product. Since 2024 Google supports modelling variants with ProductGroup: the parent group carries the shared fields, each variant is its own Product with its own SKU, price and stock, and variesBy states which attribute changes.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "ProductGroup",
  "name": "Cotton Basic T-Shirt",
  "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "Example Textiles" },
  "productGroupID": "TSH-BASIC",
  "variesBy": ["https://schema.org/size", "https://schema.org/color"],
  "hasVariant": [
    {
      "@type": "Product", "sku": "TSH-BASIC-S-BLK", "name": "Cotton Basic T-Shirt – S / Black",
      "size": "S", "color": "Black", "image": "https://cdn.example.com/tsh-blk.jpg",
      "offers": { "@type": "Offer", "price": 19.00, "priceCurrency": "EUR",
                  "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock",
                  "url": "https://www.example.com/products/basic-tshirt?variant=s-black" }
    },
    {
      "@type": "Product", "sku": "TSH-BASIC-M-BLK", "name": "Cotton Basic T-Shirt – M / Black",
      "size": "M", "color": "Black", "image": "https://cdn.example.com/tsh-blk.jpg",
      "offers": { "@type": "Offer", "price": 19.00, "priceCurrency": "EUR",
                  "availability": "https://schema.org/OutOfStock",
                  "url": "https://www.example.com/products/basic-tshirt?variant=m-black" }
    }
  ]
}

If variant URLs are parameterised versions of the same page, the canonical tag should point to the main product page; Google does not need to index each variant URL separately.

Page-level companions: BreadcrumbList, Organization/OnlineStore, WebPage

BreadcrumbList

Shows the category path in the search result as a readable trail instead of a URL and clarifies your site’s information architecture. Add it to every product and category page:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "BreadcrumbList",
  "itemListElement": [
    { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://www.example-store.com/" },
    { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Honey", "item": "https://www.example-store.com/honey/" },
    { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Organic Pine Honey 450 g" }
  ]
}

Organization or OnlineStore

Once per site, ideally on the home page: name, logo, URL, contact details and social profiles (sameAs). Google supports defining a store-wide return policy once on the OnlineStore type with hasMerchantReturnPolicy, so you do not repeat it in every Offer. Recognition of your brand as an entity by AI systems also starts from this block.

A connected @graph

Put several types in one block with a @graph array and link them via @id: Product → isPartOf WebPage → isPartOf WebSite → publisher Organization. This prevents the same entity being defined twice on a page.

FAQ and HowTo: the real situation in 2026

In August 2023 Google restricted FAQPage rich results to well-known government and health sites, and in September 2023 it removed HowTo rich results entirely. FAQ markup on a shop no longer produces expandable Q&A in search results.

It is still worth adding, for two reasons: Google continues to read the markup to understand the page, and AI search (AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity) prefers to quote content that is already in question-and-answer form. The rule: questions and answers must be visible on the page exactly as marked up, with no hidden text.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "FAQPage",
  "mainEntity": [{
    "@type": "Question",
    "name": "Does pine honey crystallise?",
    "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer",
      "text": "No. Thanks to its low glucose content, pine honey stays liquid for years at room temperature; crystallisation suggests the product may be a blend." }
  }]
}

Reviews and ratings: where they are allowed and where they are not

• AggregateRating computed from genuine customer reviews on a product page is allowed and recommended for merchant listings.
• Marking up ratings about your own company (Organization, LocalBusiness) that you wrote or collected on your own site counts as a “self-serving review”; Google ignores it and it carries a manual-action risk.
• The review count must match what is visible on the page; if no scale is given, 1–5 is assumed.

Implementing on Shopify: theme snippet and conflict check

Most Shopify themes (including Dawn) output a basic Product JSON-LD on product pages. The problem is that SEO apps and review apps add their own blocks too: three different Product definitions on one page, with conflicting prices and ratings. First count how many times application/ld+json appears in the page source; if more than once, keep a single source.

To enrich the theme’s own block, use Shopify’s json filter in snippets/structured-data.liquid (or the equivalent file in your theme); writing quotes by hand produces escaping errors:

{%- if request.page_type == 'product' -%}
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": {{ product.title | json }},
  "url": {{ shop.url | append: product.url | json }},
  "image": {{ product.featured_image | image_url: width: 1200 | prepend: 'https:' | json }},
  "description": {{ product.description | strip_html | truncate: 500 | json }},
  "sku": {{ product.selected_or_first_available_variant.sku | json }},
  "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": {{ product.vendor | json }} },
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "price": {{ product.selected_or_first_available_variant.price | divided_by: 100.0 | json }},
    "priceCurrency": {{ cart.currency.iso_code | json }},
    "availability": "https://schema.org/{% if product.available %}InStock{% else %}OutOfStock{% endif %}",
    "url": {{ shop.url | append: product.url | json }},
    "itemCondition": "https://schema.org/NewCondition"
  }
}
</script>
{%- endif -%}

For variant products, loop over product.variants with the same logic to produce a ProductGroup. Defining shipping and return policy at store level (Merchant Center or OnlineStore) is more sustainable on Shopify than writing it per product.

Validation and monitoring

1. Rich Results Test (search.google.com/test/rich-results): shows which rich results Google considers the page eligible for and which fields are missing. Test a URL or a code snippet.
2. Schema Markup Validator (validator.schema.org): vocabulary-level syntax check, independent of Google.
3. Search Console → Enhancements → Product snippets / Merchant listings: the valid, warning and error distribution across all product pages. It populates 1–2 weeks after deployment; faulty URLs are listed here.
4. Merchant Center → Products → Data quality: price and stock mismatches between the feed and on-page markup.

The 8 most common mistakes

Mistake	Consequence	Fix
Price written as text ("€24.90")	Offer invalid	A number plus a separate priceCurrency
Several Product blocks on one page	Conflicting data, lost rich results	Keep one source; disable the apps’ blocks
Marking up a rating or price not visible on the page	Spam policy violation, manual action	Mark up only visible data
Product markup on a category page	Ignored by Google	ItemList on categories, Product on products
Squeezing variants into one Product with a price range	Wrong price shown	ProductGroup + hasVariant
Relative image URLs	Image cannot be fetched	Absolute https:// URLs
Removing markup when out of stock	Page drops out of rich results	Keep availability: OutOfStock
Marking up company ratings on Organization	Self-serving review, ignored	Mark up product reviews only

Structured data works together with the technical health of the page: a slow product page does not get clicked even with a rich result. For speed, see the Shopify Core Web Vitals guide; for conversion measurement, the GA4 Consent Mode v2 and Meta CAPI article.