Structured data is one of the highest-leverage things an e-commerce store can do, and one of the most over-engineered. The internet is full of articles listing fifty schema types. In reality, only a handful affect how your store appears in Google. This is a shortlist.
What schema actually changes in the SERP.
Schema does not directly improve your ranking. It changes how your result is presented. A result with rich data takes more vertical space, shows price, stars, and stock, and gets more clicks. That is the whole pitch. Here are the schema types that actually unlock something visible.
- Product on every product detail page. Unlocks price, availability, and the product carousel in mobile results.
- AggregateRating and Review on products with genuine customer reviews. Unlocks the star rating in the snippet.
- BreadcrumbList on every interior page. Replaces the URL in the result with a readable breadcrumb path.
- Organization on the homepage. Builds your Knowledge Graph entry over time.
- FAQPage on category and PDP pages where you have real customer questions. Note that as of 2023 Google heavily restricts FAQ snippets, so prioritise the experience over the snippet.
- WebSite with SearchAction on the homepage. Unlocks the sitelinks search box.
Everything else, in our experience, is academic. ImageObject, VideoObject, HowTo, are all theoretically supported but rarely change anything for a store.
Product schema, the real version.
The minimum viable product schema looks like this. Anything less and Google may show nothing.
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Product",
"name": "Product name as a real customer would search it",
"image": ["https://yourstore.com/product.jpg"],
"description": "At least 100 characters of genuine product copy",
"sku": "YOUR-SKU",
"brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "Brand" },
"offers": {
"@type": "Offer",
"price": "29.99",
"priceCurrency": "GBP",
"availability": "https://schema.org/InStock",
"url": "https://yourstore.com/products/sku"
}
}
The common mistakes are: a missing or fake SKU, prices stored as strings with currency symbols (use plain numbers, the currency is its own field), and availability values that do not match the schema.org enum. Always test with Google's Rich Results Test before deploying.
When to add AggregateRating.
Only when you have real reviews from real customers. Adding a fake or inflated aggregateRating is a clear breach of Google's structured data guidelines, and on a competitive vertical it is the kind of thing competitors will report. Real reviews, or no rating.
If you have fewer than ten reviews per product, consider rolling up reviews at the brand or category level rather than the individual product level. That can still earn you stars on category pages without exposing thin per-product ratings.
Schema for category pages is different.
You should not put Product schema on a category page. Use BreadcrumbList and consider ItemList if your category page is genuinely a list of curated products. Most stores can ignore ItemList entirely. The breadcrumb is the only one that consistently does something visible.
The boring truth.
Most stores we audit either have no schema at all, or have schema that is technically present but missing the fields Google actually requires. Either of those is fixable in an afternoon. The win is not the schema itself. The win is being one of the few stores in your category whose result has stars, price, and stock visible at a glance.
If you want us to check your store's schema implementation against this exact list, that is one of the a prioritised action plan in our e-commerce audit. Same flat £79. We will tell you exactly which fields are missing, and which ones are technically wrong.