Let's talk shopping markup | Search Off the Record

[Music]
hello and welcome to another episode of
search off the record a podcast coming
to you from the Google search team
discussing all things search and maybe
having some fun along the way my name is
John I'm joined today by Lizzy from the
search relations team of which I'm also
part of and today we have a special
guest joining us Arena thanks for
joining us hi uh I'm glad to be here uh
thanks for inviting me so Arena can you
give us a little bit of background about
yourself I joined Google 18 years ago
and a half after I finished my PhD at E
I worked on various projects at the
beginning I also worked in Mountainville
for a year after which I came back so
after 4 years I joined the
infrastructure team here in Turk where I
met John search infrastructure or like
building infrastructure like what kind
building the search infrastructure uh we
were SE on the same floor we had many
coffee and lunch breaks together and
after six years in search I moved to
shopping and I've been uh working on
shopping for the last eight years what
brought you from infrastructure to
shopping I wanted to learn a different
search infrastructure so to say and
shopping was um good opportunity I had
um you know a big team here in suich so
cool yeah it's it's been such a long
time I I didn't realize it went back
that far but we just won't think about
that so she is more senior than you oh
my gosh is true in that case I think so
in terms of in terms of being at at
Google okay yes yeah yeah we won't say
the other number I don't I don't want to
know it's rude to ask well I remember I
met John first and then after a while
Gary joined MH uh and then they went
downhill from there yeah
yes that's why he's not here on this
episode no if you're listening come join
us for a coffee no I I it's it's been
fantastic and I think the work that that
I recall you were working on with
regards to search infrastructure that
was something that was used very
regularly like trying to understand what
was happening in search to understand
things like which URL is canonical and
exactly all of those details that was
that was really interesting back then I
worked on the debugging infrastructure
for the search pipelines uh initially
was the web search and then uh the the
private data search so Gmail uh photos
and so on which was U a different kind
of uh challenge set yeah I definitely
enjoy it and the shopping search area
it's also very different challenges
although some some things are the same
some challenges you still have you have
spam web you have spam in shopping spam
in your inbox spam in your inbox exactly
uh quality data quality issues they in
both places yeah same challenges to some
extent cool well we're here to talk
about shopping today so are we going
shopping we're going shopping I for I
guess we could but maybe after the
recording shopping spree okay shopping
spree afterwards do you get shopping
related questions often yes yeah okay I
think particularly after launches I see
them crop up because people are reading
everything very closely so after the the
variance launch or the shipping and
returns and search console launch uh
then we get more questions uh right
after that but I don't know if you see
things differently drawn like in office
hours are people always asking sort of
e-commerce and shopping are they the
same thing e-commerce and shopping I
think I don't know I think there are
synonyms but like we usually shopping
involved around like buying something
making a purchase yeah yeah we just
still shopping cool so where where can I
show up if I set up my my shop shopping
things like I I have set up a new site
where I want to sell I don't know gelato
gelato online delivery of gelato I I
think gelato would be a
bad product to sell online unless it's
freeze dried gelato what if it's like oh
okay astronaut food this as food yeah
for camping for hiking so you can take
it with you and then rehydrate your
gelato or gelato base so for people who
are going to be making it at home maybe
you're shipping some kind
of I I was thinking more like bicycle
parts okay fine fine okay Bic okay so
Bic bicycle parts I I'm trying to sell
some bicycle
parts uh you want to show up on the
where where can I show up well I think
to to answer that question I first have
to quickly explain where the results for
a shopping query will show up and the
shopping results can be provided by the
web search infrastructure or the
shopping search infrastructure so if you
have a popular website you'll probably
show up in on on on Google search on on
the do com and uh if you addit
schema.org markup to your web page then
you could show up as a product snippet
so the rich snippet part will use most
probably
the price information that you are
providing because R imp pits will show
oh for that kind of a bike we found this
results and the the price range is
between X and Y and your product will
show up there or it can also be part of
the Blue Links that are annotated with
product information so you might also
show up there so Blue Link that will
refer to your website okay so Blue Link
would be a normal search result yes
yes now the shopping infrastructure has
a interface which is the merchant center
uh UI that will U allow you as a
merchant to sign up there open an
account and um you can specify a feed
for Google so you can specify your
inventory there you can upload your feed
when you need to there is another
feature uh that we have is to say well
this is my website please auto feed the
the whole information you will find and
we rely on a so-called crawl feature we
uh go and craw your web page and extract
all the products we find um including
the ones that you are that are not in
your feed so so this is like the easiest
method without having to annotate
anything no schema do no feed just well
in order for this to work you have to
have a schema.org uh markup on the
Google search results page
okay okay for shopping price
availability are very important signals
because we also want to have the the
newest data the latest price you have
there are um actually two ways to get
your data into shopping infrastructure
one is by having Merchants uh pushing
their data using merchant center and the
other way is for us to pull the data
from the web in um the first case but
using merchant center the merchants can
specify their feed and they have better
control of how often their data will be
refreshed they can uh do the refreshing
themselves by either uploading manually
or using the fits API for their
inventory there is another setting in U
merchant center that will allow the
merchants specify on a feed basis how
often they want Google to refresh that
feed and that can be daily weekly or
monthly this is again done on a per Feit
basis the other option we have in
merchant center is to allow the
merchants to do the automatic item
uploads and this is a feature that
Merchants can use to do product level
updates and they can specify key
attributes of their products that they
want to be refreshed they cannot specify
how often they want them to be refreshed
but given our craw budget we will um
update the information more often than
on a daily basis okay yeah so that's the
help you get from from the merchant
center uh sign up the the nice thing
that comes with this is you will be able
to check the performance of your
products uh see how many clicks and
Impressions you get uh you also get
optimization suggestions for your
products and markup so there are a
couple of things that come with it now
in this way you you can be sure that
your products will be on Google okay um
yeah so the data that you fed into the
shopping infrastructure will also show
on the search on the main.com page as
product results if a user enters a
shopping quer you will see a carousel so
your product will also be part of that
Carousel and is a shopping query defined
by like I want to buy this thing it's
some kind of intent that I'm trying to
make a purchase yeah we we detect if
it's a product or what if I'm doing
research of trying to compare different
bike models and I want to read reviews
or something like this is that still
considered a shopping shopping intense
it's another example of shopping queries
yeah hard Goods this These are nice
because if you look for laptops or or so
um uh you can um you can also trigger
the shopping results for it just when
you're in the research stage this is
still considered part of like a shopping
Journey you're probably intending to
make a purchase at one point yeah yeah
so these are the these results are
returned by the shopping infrastructure
okay yeah then you also see so so some
of this data will it's also surfaced by
the popular products this that will show
on the mobile app so Google mobile where
you see okay this is the product and
these are the merchants that are selling
it we call them Merchant listings and
you might be among the top ones that are
selling the product oh okay so if John
has is carrying a particular bike model
but so it's my shop that I have called
Lizzy bikes.com
we can be showing up in the same results
that you could buy from John's store or
from lizz's store exactly exactly yeah
interesting so so basically the basis
should be schema.org markup on your
pages and you can expand that with
Merchant Center or yeah ex could you go
directly to merchant center feeds and
say I have an really old website that I
can't add structured data to so you can
go to the merchant center feed uh if you
don't have have the schema.org markup on
your page will probably stick to the
inventory that you specify in your feed
specification okay so then I probably
need to keep updating my feed every time
I add a new product page it's not going
to necessarily automatically get added
if you have schema.org we can uh mark up
we can crawl it and you can get that for
free and this is regardless if you have
a ads campaign or not so it's for for
both shopping ads and um of fre listings
we call them yeah Okay cool so is is
there any preference with regards to
schema.org or the the feed or is it more
whatever is easier preference from like
Google or from from Google a site owner
perspective well it's like how can I get
the most out of my site we recommend
doing both uh okay because as I said in
signing up on the merchant center UI you
make sure some of your inventory the one
that you specify will be in the shopping
results and you can make sure you'll be
on do com on on the shopping tab on
image Tab and then if you specify how
often you want us to refresh your data
then you can be sure that that
information will be refreshed otherwise
we yeah you you don't know when we will
have the resources to recr you and
update that information okay that sounds
cool that sounds sounds a bit like
search console but for shopping sites is
that a
simplification but now merchant center
is in search console oh it's like
they're they're connected now okay so I
see a future merger coming like I I
don't I have NOA I'm just making things
up I'm just making things up um like
please please don't expect that Google
is like pre-announcing anything I I have
no idea but it it sounds like as an
e-commerce site you should be on the one
hand doing the structur data on your
site be cor correctly verified in search
console and also merchant center to make
sure that you have yeah all of the data
all of the settings um yes there is one
more thing to mention to this point so
schema.org is the open source markup
that we are using which is actually the
the search the API into search right the
way to specify the content of your page
and so on and this is open source and
it's driven by Google but uh it's used
by some some other big companies right
for specifying the feed in merchant
center we are using a different data
format and this is called feeds pack or
the feeds product data
specification the official
terminology ver we just say feeds feeds
and it's was designed to be used by
Google in such a way that we can return
the best search results for the shopping
queries it started initially as a flat
hierarchy just key value pairs the
schema.org um format on the other hand
it's it's used by by a couple of other
big players as well so why don't these
two things match that that I feel like
is something maybe it's is it a
historical reason that we I don't know
some a team was working to develop one
aspect and so one thing has more uh
attributes that you can specify than the
other one and there's not one toone
parody at the moment yeah the attributes
overlap to a big extent but there are
still gaps that exist and we will want
to to address those gaps there are a
couple of checks that shopping does on
these product
specifications that are easier with the
fitpack format we do some cardinality
checks for instance we do length uh
checks and so on the fitpack data format
is pretty flat whereas the schema.org
it's hierarchical in schema.org you can
specify a relationship between different
pages for instance ah okay so for
example if I have shirts that are coming
in different sizes and colors and Varian
yeah you can point and to to the main
product group in schema.org and this
it's it's a bit more difficult to do
that in
in feed in feeds spe okay so if you want
one that is more flexible and you can
specify relationships across SCH
schema.org is the way to go just from
technically how it works yeah okay so
one one question that I've gotten a few
times is someone saying the the price
that they have for a product hasn't
updated in search based on what they
have on their page it sounds like that
might be an opportunity for someone to
use merchant center the yeah to update
that exactly and then they can specify
how often that information has to be
refreshed okay I would think like a
downside to providing multiple ways is
that there could be a conflict though
and how maybe more debugging problems
are trying to track down what is the
thing that is causing the price to show
up want this is this was the main
motivation for us to extend search
console with the new margin listing
report uh so what what we actually do in
this new report we do the shopping
checks on the schema.org
markup and show the users if you have to
fix this and this uh problems in order
for your website to show in the shopping
results these are the additional checks
that we do in shopping and we surface on
on search console is there a way for us
to notify people if there's a mismatch
in the price to point them in the right
direction they like hey this is the area
where maybe you are having a problem in
terms of the price because I I feel like
this is one aspect where you might need
to check uh for the price it maybe
you're providing a different one one is
stale for example and the feed that you
uploaded and it's not matching what's on
your website now is that something that
Google could notify you like hey this is
actually where the problem is or like
maybe you should look at this you have a
mismatch it it sounds like a feature
request yeah well for Lizzy's I mean
maybe Lizzy's bikes should just submit
something that is consistent
but what if I don't know it's hard for
me to find out which thing is the thing
that's still hanging out that's
stale this is a good question for the
shopping data quality team so if users
want to get a deep dive into that area I
think you can invite the from that team
yeah okay cool because yeah that's a
valid question I did specify the markup
on my page is good passes the the
shopping checks it looks okay in the
search console but doesn't show up on
the main I still the price is wrong
because the search the price is wrong we
don't show it okay yeah so that that
might be yeah a data quality issue it
might be a policy issue because as in
search we also have checks for policy
are you selling counter fate or are you
selling over the counter medicine or or
we also do those checks so if you do
that we don't show you in the shopping
search result
it might be also a A quot or or a
problem because we would like to crawl
everything but we cannot right like in
search Oho like a delay so maybe the
price is updated but you just haven't
come to crawl might yeah like a crawl
budget issue like if you have a very
large site okay yeah exactly so we we
have the same issues cool and the the
shopping policies that you mentioned I I
assume those are documented public yes
yes yeah okay and I think that they vary
by country because different regions
have different
policies specific things yes y okay
fascinating okay I hope bicycle parts
are available
globally it depends on how you set up
your site I guess or are you are going
to ship your tires to other countries or
not speaking of that there is a upcoming
regulation I think it's called the right
to be repaired or something like that
okay and then every part will get the
gtin and you can sell them and and
replace them yeah we start usually in
the US and then roll out region by
region so you might be in a region where
we haven't rolled out the new feature
yet Europe takes a bit longer because of
the regulations that is a common
question that I get is why can't I
trigger this thing like you made an
announcement on the blog where is it
exactly and sometimes we are not
publishing uh the list of countries yet
yeah but I I guess I mean I I've seen
that across all kinds of features I I
think the the issue with handling
different countries or regions
differently that's yeah kind of normal
and almost to be expected cool can you
share some details about some of the
ongoing projects that you've been
working on um sure so we have been
working on adding and crawling Merchant
level information and add from
schema.org markup and we are surfacing
this information on the merchant
knowledge panel which is displayed on
the Google uh main result page the goal
of the knowledge panel is to help
businesses build trust with users so the
customers can see information about the
merchant directly on the Google web page
uh like phone number contact uh
information physical address online
presence uh and of course the name of
the business the logo and the reviews
for that Merchant we are extending the
organization type of the schema theor
markup to include more information like
shipping and returns and loyalty is the
next information the next program that
we want to add this is not only for
merchants but all organizations of
course we are also going to extend the
merchant listing uh report in search
consult to include all the shopping
validations we run on these new uh data
fields so that the merchants can Surface
this information on the merch knowledge
panel that sounds fascinating sounds
like lots of things are are still in
progress yeah and you would think like
selling things online is is a solved
problem but lots of details involved wow
exactly the other area where we put a
lot of effort into is to close the gap
between a schema.org and feits pack we
want to have full I mean oneone uh
parative uh between the attributes and
uh we are working on on closing that
that Gap yeah and if people want to
watch what's happening there would they
subscribe to schema.org blog post there
or is that something that we would post
on the search center
website I think posting on on search
Central website it's it's definitely
going to help the schema.org effort has
a active Community a pretty active
community on GitHub uh and this is the
place where we also get the the feedback
from so we we um do our update usually
there and some other forums yes so cool
and the process for that is that
something because it's open source that
you sort of give people a preview before
happens if they want to see this thing
like before it is actually uh live
rolled
out I can I can give you uh another a
recent example there uh we recently
launch variance M and we uh needed to
First add uh support for variance in
schema.org and for that we uh had a lot
of discussions with the community uh got
their feedback uh so once we agreed on a
solution for schema.org we worked with
infrastructure team to implement the
changes on that side that meant
generating separate products or offers
from this markup so individual offers
and then search had to do the changes in
Rich Snippets to get these individual
products into this Rich snippit summary
then the other step where I was uh
involved a lot was to extend the search
console Report with the additional
checks for variant so we can show the
developers how to fix their markup to be
variant compliant uh and then you know
the last part uh communicating the
changes documenting the markup we have
to tell people about it it's Now
supported how to do it exactly yes yeah
then once all this steps are done we
watch for issues bugs people will
implement it the um they will try it and
then see can I trigger the rich results
they will notify us if something isn't
happening the way that we said it was
going to happen which is very useful for
us I think yeah so this project took
probably a year a bit longer yeah wow
okay was this the most complex launch
that you've worked on from shopping from
like a I guess an ecosystem perspective
yeah the probably the number of teams
involved was the largest cool wow okay
lots of complex stuff cool there is one
more thing probably one short more thing
okay well you know to motivate the the
e-commerce Community to implement the
markup right we also want to show them
the performance of their products on on
Google right so we also worked on
reporting the impression and clicks they
get on their products on do on image
search and so on so that that also
required the changes in our
reporting the the overlay where you can
see the Impressions overlaid within the
merchant listing report to see like when
you've resolved the errors for your
markup that ideally then you see your
impressions increasing because now
they're eligible fantastic wow that's
lot of details for this episode thanks a
lot for joining us Arena if folks want
to reach out to you directly where would
be a place I am available on LinkedIn to
as simple as that and we'll put the link
um in our description for this episode
so people can click it and we don't have
to verbally spell it out cool verb
linking verbally link well voice search
it's like maybe voice links are the next
thing I don't know we'll find out next
episode or I don't
John I can't props okay anyway thank you
all for listening thank you for for
joining us here thank you for inviting
me it's been fantastic thank you and
goodbye bye
bye we've been having fun with these
podcast episodes and I hope you The
Listener have been finding them both
entertaining and insightful as well uh
feel free to drop me a note on Twitter
or chat with us at one of the next
events that we go to if you have any
thoughts and of course don't forget to
like like And subscribe thank you and
goodbye
[Music]