The MerchantReturnPolicy field everyone forgets is now table stakes
As of this week, more sellers are quietly getting flagged in Merchant listings for shipping
The deeper play: define it once as a
What it means for you — if your shipping and returns live only in Merchant Center settings and not in on-page JSON-LD, your organic product snippets are leaving eligibility on the table.
Watch this: returns markup is the next field to get a dedicated Search Console report.
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Больше про gam updates — @AdOpsWire
As of this week, more sellers are quietly getting flagged in Merchant listings for shipping
Offer markup without a hasMerchantReturnPolicy node. Google's free listings docs have leaned this way for a while, but sources in the SERPs report the warning moving from optional to a soft eligibility gate on product results.The deeper play: define it once as a
MerchantReturnPolicy with applicableCountry and returnPolicyCategory, then reference it across your whole catalog instead of inlining per product. Cleaner graph, one source of truth.What it means for you — if your shipping and returns live only in Merchant Center settings and not in on-page JSON-LD, your organic product snippets are leaving eligibility on the table.
Watch this: returns markup is the next field to get a dedicated Search Console report.
—
Больше про gam updates — @AdOpsWire
Two years post-FAQ cull, the orphaned markup is still costing you
Google restricted FAQ rich results to authoritative gov/health sites and killed HowTo on desktop and mobile back in 2023. Plenty of sites left the JSON-LD in place, figuring it's harmless. It isn't — sources in the SERPs note bloated
The insider move: don't delete the data, repurpose it. Fold those Q&A pairs into a
What it means for you — audit for zombie FAQPage markup this week. Stripped pages render leaner; the answer content stays AI-visible.
Google restricted FAQ rich results to authoritative gov/health sites and killed HowTo on desktop and mobile back in 2023. Plenty of sites left the JSON-LD in place, figuring it's harmless. It isn't — sources in the SERPs note bloated
FAQPage blocks still trip 'unparsable structured data' noise and slow your render budget.The insider move: don't delete the data, repurpose it. Fold those Q&A pairs into a
WebPage with mainEntity or feed them into your Article as about nodes. AI engines still parse Q&A pairs for citation even when Google won't draw a rich result.What it means for you — audit for zombie FAQPage markup this week. Stripped pages render leaner; the answer content stays AI-visible.
Microdata isn't deprecated — but Google's tooling is voting with its feet
Nobody at Schema.org has formally sunset microdata or RDFa, and the spec still treats all three syntaxes as equal. But here's what's actually happening: the Rich Results Test, the structured data report, and nearly every new Google example ships JSON-LD first. Microdata edge cases (nested
The undercurrent — JSON-LD decouples your data from your DOM, which is exactly what AI crawlers want when they read a page without rendering it fully.
What it means for you — if you're maintaining legacy microdata, you're not breaking rules, but you're betting against the toolchain. Migrate high-value templates to JSON-LD; leave the long tail until a redesign.
Watch this: the next parser quirk will hit microdata, not JSON-LD.
Nobody at Schema.org has formally sunset microdata or RDFa, and the spec still treats all three syntaxes as equal. But here's what's actually happening: the Rich Results Test, the structured data report, and nearly every new Google example ships JSON-LD first. Microdata edge cases (nested
itemref, split DOM nodes) increasingly parse inconsistently.The undercurrent — JSON-LD decouples your data from your DOM, which is exactly what AI crawlers want when they read a page without rendering it fully.
What it means for you — if you're maintaining legacy microdata, you're not breaking rules, but you're betting against the toolchain. Migrate high-value templates to JSON-LD; leave the long tail until a redesign.
Watch this: the next parser quirk will hit microdata, not JSON-LD.
The pending.schema.org namespace is where tomorrow's rich results are born
Most markup folks only touch the stable schema.org core. The real signal lives at
Why insiders watch it: a type appearing in pending is the earliest public hint that a vertical is getting structured-data attention. By the time it hits the core release and Google docs, the early movers already have templates shipped.
What it means for you — bookmark the pending namespace and the schemaorg GitHub issues. You can deploy a pending type today; it validates and degrades gracefully if it never graduates.
Watch this: energy and sustainability types are the most active pending cluster right now.
Most markup folks only touch the stable schema.org core. The real signal lives at
pending.schema.org — the staging ground where new types incubate before promotion. Terms like 3DModel, EnergyConsumptionDetails and assorted health types all passed through there first.Why insiders watch it: a type appearing in pending is the earliest public hint that a vertical is getting structured-data attention. By the time it hits the core release and Google docs, the early movers already have templates shipped.
What it means for you — bookmark the pending namespace and the schemaorg GitHub issues. You can deploy a pending type today; it validates and degrades gracefully if it never graduates.
Watch this: energy and sustainability types are the most active pending cluster right now.