Google has quietly updated its organizational structured data documentation to clarify two points regarding merchant returns in response to feedback about an ambiguity in the previous version.
Organizational structured data and dealer returns
Google recently enhanced its organizational structured data to accommodate a merchant return policy. The change now allows for a site-wide merchant return policy to be implemented.
The original reason for adding this support:
“Add support for organization-level return policies
What: Added documentation on setting a general return policy for an entire organization.
Why: This makes it easier to define and maintain common return policies across an entire site.”
However, this change left no answer to the question of what happens if a site has a site-wide return policy but different policies apply to individual products.
The clarification applies to the specific scenario where a site uses both a site-wide return policy in its structured data and another one for specific products.
What has priority?
What happens when a merchant uses both site-wide and structured data for product returns? Google’s new documentation states that Google ignores the site-wide policy for product returns in favor of a more detailed product-level policy in the structured data.
The clarification states:
“If you choose to provide return policy markers at both the organization level and the product level, Google will default to using the product-level return policy markers.”
Changes are also reflected elsewhere
Google has also updated the documentation to reflect the scenario of using two levels of merchant return policies in a different section explaining whether structured data or merchant feed data takes precedence. There is no change to the policy, Merchant Center data still takes precedence.
This is the old documentation:
“If you choose to use both markup and settings in Merchant Center, Google will only use the information provided in Merchant Center for all products submitted in your Merchant Center product feeds, including automated feeds.”
This is the same section, but updated with additional wording:
“If you choose to use both markup (whether at the organization level or product level or both) and settings in Merchant Center, Google will only use the information provided in Merchant Center for all products submitted in your Merchant Center product feeds, including automated feeds.”
Read the newly updated documentation on structured organizational data:
Organization (Organization) structured data – MerchantReturnPolicy
Featured image from Shutterstock/sutlafk
