Oct 4, 2024
What is the use of canonical URL
Example:
Green T-Shirt - has no variation
Pants - 1 variation color Green
Pants - 1 Variation color Blue
Those pants are identical except for its colors. Under feed, I already created an identical group ID and an unique produdct ID for those pants. Is it necessary to include canonical URL?
Whats the real purpose of it under merchant center product feed if I have already included a item group ID
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All Replies (2)
Oct 4, 2024
each variant in physical inventory must be submitted separately,
with accurate inventory availability details for each physical item —
for example, a variant pants item in green, may be in stock while
its variant item in blue, may be out of stock — such details must
be updated in a timely manner
one or more variants may or may not be shown in
shopping, based on statistical-machine-learning,
and other factors.
canonical url is solely a google-search feature, and is not used
by the merchant-center at all; however, purely as a convenience
feature canonical url may also be submitted in the feed, to help
with google-search-indexing, but is otherwise ignored.
by the merchant-center at all; however, purely as a convenience
feature canonical url may also be submitted in the feed, to help
with google-search-indexing, but is otherwise ignored.
Last edited Oct 4, 2024
Think of the product with no variants as a product with only one variant.
The item group ID is to identify the product.
The item ID identifies the variant.
e.g. a product with no variants may use the same ID for both.
Now to Google Search...
If you have unique variant pages, then you will have pages that are probably classed as near duplicate in the Google search system, and Google will canonicalise them together. You can also suggest they do this with the page's canonical tag.
This has no effect on the Merchant Centre data and what shows in shopping based search results.
Google now supports marking up variant information on the main product page. This may help them show better search results in the future, as they can get all the variant data from the base product page:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/product-variants
Now to Google Search...
If you have unique variant pages, then you will have pages that are probably classed as near duplicate in the Google search system, and Google will canonicalise them together. You can also suggest they do this with the page's canonical tag.
This has no effect on the Merchant Centre data and what shows in shopping based search results.
Google now supports marking up variant information on the main product page. This may help them show better search results in the future, as they can get all the variant data from the base product page:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/product-variants