Introduction

Google’s recent reporting update separates and expands Merchant listings and Product snippets. This change can be leveraged by your business to make sure the structured data across your site aligns with Google requirements and appears correctly in different product experiences.

This is most impactful for businesses that host structured product data on their web pages. However, this topic is valuable to businesses that hope to leverage the different product experiences Google offers to users. Below we dive deeper into this change and what to look out for moving forward.

What Happened?

On March 27th, 2023, the Google Search Central Twitter account announced changes made to the previously introduced Search Console report for product structured data. This report has been replaced by two reports focusing on Merchant listings and Product snippets separately. Here is a quick overview of all the updates. 

New Merchant listings report

What does the Merchant listings report tell me?

This report highlights issues with structured data for free listing experiences in search results.

Do I need to check the Merchant listings report?

If your website contains pages that sell products, checking this report is valuable.

Product snippets report

What does the Product snippets report tell me?

This report highlights issues with structured data for product snippets in search results.

Do I need to check the Product snippets report?

If your website contains pages that offer product review information or collects data from multiple other sites, checking this report is valuable.

Where can I find these reports?

1.) Both the Product snippet and Merchant listing reports can be found in the Shopping 

dropdown in the Google Search Console navigation bar.

2.) Selecting Product Snippets shows the performance of structured data on the selected page used in Product Snippet experiences in specific Google searches.

3.)  Selecting Merchant listings shows the performance of structured data on the selected page used in Merchant listing experiences in specific Google searches.

As shown above, these reports are easily accessible through Google Search Console and can be exported to Google Sheets or downloaded in Excel or CSV formats. 

Expanded reporting allows users to validate your structured data for Merchant listings separately, giving you valuable information about how prospects see your business online. For more information on these different reports, follow the link below…

What’s Next?

This change comes off the back of more extensive updates made in September 2022 that allowed for deeper insights into the search performance of businesses’ product snippets. Although this update seems small, it is another piece of information that you can use to put your marketing efforts ahead of your competitors.

Google Search Console offers a variety of tools and reports to help businesses show their products in their best light. The Rich Results Test allows businesses to test the structured data included on their pages and ensure they fully leverage the product experiences Google offers.

dbaPlatform helps local businesses win on Google

dbaPlatform helps local businesses like retailers, vehicle dealers, healthcare providers, and others win local searches on Google. Learn about placing free vehicle or product listings on Google and Microsoft with dbaPlatform here. We also support local product ads and local vehicle ads.