Marketing 2 min read

Retailers now Control how Product Information Appears on Google

Casimiro PT / Shutterstock.com

Casimiro PT / Shutterstock.com

Google has been launching ways for retailers to display their product information to millions of search engine users for free.

Earlier in the year, the search giant introduced a new process for consumers to find retail products on Search in the U.S. These include items such as clothes, shoes, and other similar products.

Shortly after that, Google announced that it brought free retail listings to product knowledge panels on the search engine.

Brands that are looking to participate in this experience have to annotate the product on their website using schema.org. Alternatively, retailers can submit the information directly to Google Merchant Center.

According to Google, the processes above are the best option for retailers to ensure that their product information appears on Search. But they are no longer the only options.

In a blog post announcement, product manager at Google, Bernhard Schindlholzer said:

“While we believe that this approach positively benefits the retail ecosystem, we recognize that some retailers may prefer to control how their product information appears in this experience.”

Last week, the search giant announced new options for retailers to control how their product information appears on Google. It includes using robots meta tags and an HTML attribute.

New Ways for Retailers to Customize Product Information in Search Results

Display No Snippet for Products

Retailers can use the “nosnippet” robots tag to prevent any snippet from showing the page in search results. It essentially removes the page from any free listing experience such as textual, image, and rich snippets.

Specify a Maximum Snippet Length

A new “max-snippet:[number]” robots meta tag allows retailers to set a maximum snippet length, in characters. That way, if the structured data is greater than the maximum snippet length, the page will be removed from any free listing experience.

Set a Maximum Image Size

Google now allows retailers to customize the product image that appears in their snippets.

Thanks to a “max-image-preview:[setting]” robots meta tag, users can specify the maximum size of an image preview. The options include “none”, “standard”, “large.”

Prevent Specific Content from Appearing in a Snippet

Retailers can use the “data-nosnippet” HTML attribute to specify a section of content that should appear in a search snippet. Applying the attribute to information about product image, ratings, etc. will remove the page from any free listing experience.

Read More: Mueller Explains why Google Might Show Less FAQ Rich Results

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