If you look in your Google Search Console, notice the menu category labelled 'Shopping'. Under that see two sub-categories:

> Product snippets which we are all familiar with, and
> Merchant listings which is NEW as from Tuesday, 13 September 2022. Read the Google Blog Post here =>

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Now when you run a Product webpage URL (with standard ECT microdata snippets) through the Google Rich Results Test Tool, the 'Detected structured data' appears in two categories:

> Product snippets, 1 valid item detected, the usual non-critical issues, all good
> Merchant listings, 1 invalid item detected, groan

The 1 critical issue is: offers ... Invalid enum value in field 'itemCondition'


NOTE: That HTML code only appears when you enter this parameter in includes.php: (Yes, it can be omitted.)


==> So WHY would itemprop "itemCondition" pass as Valid in Product snippets but Invalid in Merchant listings

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I went to the Google Search Community and grizzled: https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/179656054

The answer given suggests the structured data was found on hidden content. The solution suggested is "This markup can (and should) be presented in conjunction with text that is visible to the user."

So Vince, if we had another element named "availability" to display on the Product webpage like ...


... that would / should fix it. And perhaps a way to select the Item Condition in Product Admin. Yes, what a pain, I agree.

I suppose a clean result in Merchant listings snippets is important? Do you think it is necessary to include "Item Condition" at all? Other Ecommerce Templates users might comment?

Gary

That is weird...

I just tested a few of my product pages and they all come back with valid:

Product snippets
Merchant listings
Review snippets

No critical issues of any kind

Patrick

I see that Patrick, but you are using ...



Gary

Hey Gary,

Yes... I forgot I was using that.

Hopefully Vince can fix the stock ECT version.

Hope all is well with you.

Patrick

I am fine thanks Patrick. One question for you.
Curious to know if you are able to select the ItemCondition: NewCondition, UsedCondition, DamagedCondition, RefurbishedCondition
Or is every Product on your website advertised as NewCondition ?

Gary

Everything is NewCondition as that is all we offer

Hey Gary,

If used in conjunction with the Google Merchant Center feed I offer, the condition is changeable in admin and is represented in the schema.

Mike

Mike Beebe
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Hi Mike,

Interesting to know that your Google Merchant Center AddOn permits the itemCondition to be changed in the ECT Admin Panel, thank you.

However, testing product pages on Patrick's Badman Bullets website, I must comment that your JSON-LD entry "itemCondition" : "http://schema.org/NewCondition" appears only in the Source Code.
Nowhere on the webpage itself does it tell the customer "Item Condition: New".

So that leaves me bewildered as to why Google Merchant Listings interpret your JSON-LD snippet as Valid, but the standard ECT microdata snippet as Invalid.

I say that is Bulltish !

Gary

From how it reads, it sounds like if you are using microdata with HTML tags, the data must be both tagged and visible to the user. Not marked up for Google only.

Just my interpretation.

Mike

Mike Beebe
President,
DataLinks Software Solutions
www.dlss.ca
Rate Me Here

ASP and PHP mods - www.dlss.ca/products.asp
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Buy Cigars Online www.CigarSmokeShop.net

There is a Microdata snippet for "itemCondition" with text visible on the webpage to say "Condition: New". Run that <code> through the Google Rich Results Test Tool and the result given is:
> Product snippets, Valid
> Merchant listings, Invalid enum value in field 'itemCondition'

Therefore, Microdata being "visible to user" makes no difference.

In Merchant listings, the Google Testing Tool says the enum value "NewCondition" is Invalid. But this page https://schema.org/NewCondition confirms that the Testing Tool is wrong. But Google will not fess up to it.

For now, I have removed this $parameter from the includes.php configuration file:

Now no snippet for itemprop="itemCondition" appears in the code and we get a clean Valid result in both Product snippets and Merchant listings.

Check again in 1 or 2 months and bet that Google will have fixed that false report.

Gary

Scratch that, I finally found the SOLUTION ...

Run that <code> through the Google Rich Results Test Tool and the result given is:
> Product snippets, Valid
> Merchant listings, Valid

Therefore Vince, if you could kindly change the Microdata snippet inserted for:


From:

delete the red bit and just have:

That will fix this issue

Gary

Good find

Mike Beebe
President,
DataLinks Software Solutions
www.dlss.ca
Rate Me Here

ASP and PHP mods - www.dlss.ca/products.asp
A Tremendous Home - www.ATremendousHome.com
Buy Cigars Online www.CigarSmokeShop.net

Well thanks very much once again, Gary . . . and that is now changed in the updater.

Vince

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Hi, I seem to be getting the merchant listing error referred to in this post.. I just updated to 7.4.10 hoping this would fix it, but my pages are still producing this error. Is the fix included in this version or do I need to update to 7.5.3?

Richard.

Yes Richard, you need to update to the latest v7.5.3 advanced.

Gary

Hi Richard
If you are not in a position to update to v7.5 now then please let me know and I'll get this fix into the v7.4 updater.

Vince

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Thanks Gary ..I'll do that.

Richard.

Thanks Vince, but no need as I have now updated to 7.5. All seems to be working ok..

Richard.

Vince, might you be able to provide a patch for this that we can apply to our v7.4.11 store?

We considered updating to 7.5 but it looks like some of our content would break.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

- Paul D.

Hi Paul, all you need to do is ...

In vsadmin\inc folder, open incproddetail.php
Search for the one line containing: itemprop="itemCondition"
In that line delete the bit of code which says: itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/OfferItemCondition"

So now that line will just say:

if(@$GLOBALS['setschemacondition']&&!$GLOBALS['noschemamarkup']) print '<meta itemprop="itemCondition" content="http://schema.org/'.(@$GLOBALS['schemaitemcondition']!=''?$GLOBALS['schemaitemcondition']:'NewCondition').'" />';

Save incproddetail.php and upload to server.

Gary

Thanks for this, Gary.

Fingers crossed that the Invalid enum value in field "itemCondition" (in "offers") Merchant listing errors go away now that we've edited and uploaded incproddetail.php and Google re-indexes those pages.

This is much appreciated