# What Are Merchant Listings in Google Search?

> What Google's merchant listings are, where they appear, which Product and Offer markup they need and how to check whether your product page is eligible.

URL: https://clione.ai/glossary/merchant-listings/
Lang: en

Merchant listings are not your [product page](/glossary/product-page/), the page on your store where people buy, or your [Google Merchant Center](/glossary/google-merchant-center/) account. They are **what Google builds from that page when it shows it in its results**: the product with its price, whether it is in stock, what shipping costs and what happens if you return it. Google calls them merchant listings, or merchant listing experiences, in its documentation.[^google-merchant-listing] For a store they matter for a direct reason: they are the Google result that looks most like a shop window, and you become eligible from the page itself, with [structured data](/glossary/structured-data/).

## How it works

**Where they appear.** According to Google, when you add [Product](/glossary/product-schema/) markup to your page, it can be eligible for merchant listing experiences on Google Search: the shopping knowledge panel, Google Images, popular product results and product snippets. These listings can highlight specific product data, such as **price, availability and shipping and return information**.[^google-merchant-listing] They are, in other words, a family of [rich results](/glossary/rich-results/) built around buying.

**Which pages are eligible.** Only pages where the shopper can buy the product, **not pages that link to other sites that sell it**.[^google-merchant-listing] A review page or a comparison site does not qualify here, even with the same markup. Google splits the two cases into two types of product data: product snippets, for pages where you cannot buy directly, with more options to describe reviews, and merchant listings, for pages where the customer buys from you, with more options to detail the product, such as clothing sizes, shipping and the [return policy](/glossary/return-policy/).[^google-product-intro]

**What markup they need.** The minimum is short. The Product needs a name (`name`), an image (`image`) and an offer (`offers`). The offer, of the [Offer](/glossary/offer-schema/) type, needs the price (`price`) and the currency (`priceCurrency`, in ISO 4217 format). And one difference worth reading twice: **unlike product snippets, merchant listings require a price greater than zero**.[^google-merchant-listing] Beyond that, Google recommends adding shipping (`shippingDetails`), the return policy (`hasMerchantReturnPolicy`), the average rating, the brand, the [GTIN](/glossary/gtin/), the description and the [SKU](/glossary/sku/).[^google-merchant-listing]

**Shipping and returns, best declared once for the whole store.** Google recommends declaring the shipping and return policies globally, in the company's [Organization](/glossary/organization-schema/) markup, and using the offer's properties only when some products have a different policy that overrides the general one.[^google-merchant-listing] The detail of each is in [OfferShippingDetails](/glossary/offershippingdetails/) and [MerchantReturnPolicy](/glossary/merchantreturnpolicy/).

**Variants.** Product results only support pages that focus on a single product or on several variants of the same product.[^google-merchant-listing] A [category page](/glossary/category-page/) with twenty different backpacks is not a merchant listing; the page for one backpack in three colors can be.

**The relationship with Merchant Center.** Merchant listings do not require a Merchant Center account: you become eligible with the page's markup. But Google recommends both routes at once, because **giving structured data on the page and a Merchant Center feed maximizes the experiences you are eligible for** and helps it understand and verify your data.[^google-product-intro] Merchant Center's free listings are a different program, with their own requirements: an active account, compliance with its policies and the return policy published on the site. With them, products can show up in Search, the Shopping tab, Images and Lens, YouTube, Maps and [Gemini](/glossary/gemini/).[^gmc-free-listings]

**Where Google measures it.** When Google identifies your site as an online store, because it exists mainly to sell physical products or because it has product structured data, [Search Console](/glossary/google-search-console/) shows a Shopping section. Inside is the merchant listings report, which collects the markup of this type that Google has found on your site. Google describes these listings as richer results that **always include a price** and that can appear in a carousel of similar products from different sellers.[^gsc-shopping]

## In a store

A **fictional example**: a backpack's product page in an invented mountain-gear store, with the minimum markup Google asks for and two recommended properties. Shipping and returns are not here because the store declares them once in its Organization markup, as Google recommends.[^google-merchant-listing]

```json
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "Cumbre 20 L waterproof urban backpack",
  "image": "https://cumbre-store.example/img/cumbre-backpack-20.jpg",
  "sku": "CUM-20-BLK",
  "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "Cumbre" },
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "price": 59.9,
    "priceCurrency": "USD",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock",
    "url": "https://cumbre-store.example/cumbre-urban-backpack-20"
  }
}
```


What decides whether this page is eligible, field by field:

| Data (fictional example) | What Google asks for              | What happens if it fails                                                                      |
| ------------------------ | --------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `name` and `image`       | Required in the Product           | Without them, the markup is no use for a merchant listing                                     |
| `price`                  | Required and greater than zero    | A "contact for price" or a 0 leaves it out, even though it can work for a product snippet     |
| `priceCurrency`          | Required, in ISO 4217             | A required value is missing and the page is not eligible                                      |
| `sku` and `brand`        | Recommended                       | The page is eligible anyway; these are values Google advises adding                           |
| Shipping and returns     | Recommended, best in Organization | The page is eligible anyway, but without the shipping and return details Google can highlight |


Source for each row: Google's documentation on merchant listings.[^google-merchant-listing]


That any page with product markup is eligible to be a merchant listing. **A page with no price, or with a price of zero, is not eligible**, even though the same markup can work for a product snippet.[^google-merchant-listing] It is what happens to a store that hides the price from anyone not logged in, or to a product published before it has a price.


## How to check it

1. **Run a published page through the [Rich Results Test](/glossary/rich-results-test/)** and see whether it detects the merchant listing element and with which errors. Google recommends validating your code this way and fixing critical errors.[^google-merchant-listing]
2. **Inspect the same URL in Search Console** to see how Google sees it once published, which is what Google advises doing with a few pages before rolling the markup out to the rest.[^google-merchant-listing]
3. **Open the Shopping section of Search Console**, if you have it, and the merchant listings report: it says which pages have valid markup and which fail.[^gsc-shopping]
4. **Look for pages with a zero price or no price** in the markup, and pages that link to another store instead of selling: neither is eligible.[^google-merchant-listing]
5. **Check where you declare shipping and returns.** If it is on every offer and not in Organization, make sure it says the same across the whole catalog. If you have Merchant Center linked, Search Console also lets you manage those settings in its Shopping configuration.[^gsc-shopping]

## Related concept: product snippets

Product snippets use the same Product markup, but they are meant for pages where you cannot buy directly, such as a review or a comparison, and mostly show the rating and price as a visual enhancement of the result.[^google-product-intro][^gsc-shopping] Merchant listings are for the page that sells: they require a price greater than zero and accept more purchase detail.[^google-merchant-listing] Both are rich results, and Search Console counts them in two different reports.[^gsc-shopping] A well-marked-up product page can be eligible for both; a review page, only for the first.

To go further, the [structured data reading path](/learn/structured-data/) orders the rest of the terms, starting with the [JSON-LD](/glossary/json-ld/) markup all of this is written in.