I’m as skeptical as the next person of the altruism behind Google’s motives, but when any new set of guidelines comes out, we should take notice. The new Best practices for ecommerce in Google Search guide contains the following sections:
- Where ecommerce content can appear on Google – Understand the different surfaces where your ecommerce content can appear.
- Share your product data with Google – Decide which method to use when sharing your product data with Google.
- Include structured data relevant to ecommerce – Help Google understand and appropriately present your content by providing explicit information about the meaning of your page with structured data.
- How to launch a new ecommerce website – Learn how to strategically launch a new ecommerce website and understand timing considerations when registering your website with Google.
- Designing a URL structure for ecommerce sites – Avoid issues related to crawling and URL design that are specific to ecommerce sites.
- Help Google understand your ecommerce site structure – Design a site navigation structure and link between pages to help Google understand what is most important on your ecommerce site.
- Pagination, incremental page loading, and their impact on Google Search – Learn common UX patterns for ecommerce sites and understand how UX patterns impact Google’s ability to crawl and index your content.
Note that the authors say that although the focus here is on online commerce sites, many of the points are equally relevant to sites that list products that are only available at ‘brick and mortar stores’.