Ecommerce Schema Markup Research [Study of 105 Websites]
Table of Contents
Standing out in today’s crowded eCommerce search results is a real challenge.
That’s where schema markup can give you an edge – Adding schema is like sticking helpful labels on your website pages, describing the different elements on the page.
This extra layer of information not only boosts your visibility but can also significantly improve click-through rates by showcasing rich result features such as product prices, ratings, stock availability and location pins.
So, how well are eCommerce websites using schema markup? And does schema markup impact page rankings?
To find out, we analysed seven different ecommerce niches to understand how online shops are implementing structured data and how this relates to their search rankings.
Additionally, we independently analysed 3 of the biggest online marketplaces – Amazon, Ebay and Alibaba – to better understand their schema implementation maturity.
Our Study Methodology
Our analysis focused on the top 15 ranking pages for each niche in the UK Google Search results, specifically looking at independent ecommerce stores.
Objective
Our primary goal was to:
- Identify trends in schema markup usage across eCommerce websites.
- Measure if there’s a correlation between schema markup and Google rankings.
Data Collection
To ensure a clear and accurate analysis, we gathered data from the top 15 Google search results (SERPs) for a single high-intent keyword within each niche.
This approach allowed us to assess how the highest-ranking eCommerce pages use schema markup to gain a competitive edge.
The seven niches we reviewed in the study:
- Home Furniture — 13 eCommerce sites
- Wedding Jewellery — 15 eCommerce sites
- Pet Products — 14 eCommerce sites
- Electronic Hardware — 15 eCommerce sites
- Online Courses — 15 eCommerce sites
- Electric Bikes — 16 eCommerce sites
- Nutritional Supplements — 14 eCommerce sites
Exclusions
To maintain the study’s focus on independent eCommerce websites, we excluded the following from our analysis:
- Google Shopping results — as these follow a different ranking methodology.
- Online magazines and publishing platforms — since their primary content is informational, not transactional.
- Marketplace listings — including Amazon, eBay, and similar platforms, to avoid skewing the data with multi-vendor results.
- Duplicate URLs from the same company — ensuring we didn’t over-represent any single brand.
By setting these clear parameters, we were able to capture a precise snapshot of how schema markup is used across a variety of eCommerce niches and what this means for SEO performance.
Key Findings from the Study
Rich Results Appearance
One of the most striking insights from the study was the relationship between schema markup and rich results appearances.
Across the seven eCommerce niches, the presence of rich results varied — but there was a clear trend:
Search Results from Google Page 1 have a higher chance of getting rich results compared to Page 2 results.
Here’s how rich results broke down by niche:
Overall Schema Usage
Niche-Specific Trends
Almost all niches except Online Courses use Product Snippets and Merchant Listing schema on their product pages.
Businesses selling online courses use Course Info and Course List Item for their product pages.
Ranking Correlation
The study also found a positive correlation between structured data usage and higher rankings.
However, correlation doesn’t imply causation since organic search rankings are influenced by a host of factors.
Markup Formats
When it comes to implementation, JSON-LD emerged as the most popular schema format across all niches.
Its ease of use and Google’s clear preference for this format have made it the go-to method for adding structured data to eCommerce pages.
What Type of Schema Markup Are eCommerce Sites Using?
Our study revealed that top-ranking eCommerce sites strategically implement schema markup across different page types, from home pages to product pages.
Let’s break down the most common types of schema used for each page and their purpose:
Home Page Schema Markup
The home page often acts as a brand’s digital storefront, so schema markup here focuses on establishing brand identity and improving navigation:
- Organisation — highlights key business information, such as the company name, logo, contact details, and social media links.
- Local Business — useful for eCommerce sites with physical stores, displaying store locations, opening hours, and addresses.
- Sitelinks Searchbox — adds an internal search box directly within the search result.
- Video — showcases promotional or explainer videos to boost engagement.
- Breadcrumbs — clarifies site structure, helping search engines (and users) understand page hierarchy.
Category Page Schema Markup
Category pages are often the landing pages that rank for Competitive (head) keywords.
They are essential for showcasing product ranges, and the schema markup here focuses on helping search engines understand product collections and user interactions:
- ItemList — organises products in a clear list format.
- Breadcrumbs — clarifies site structure, helping search engines (and users) understand page hierarchy.
- Aggregate Rating — displays average ratings for a product category, boosting credibility.
- Merchant Listing — allows products to appear in Google’s merchant-focused features, like Shopping results.
- Sitelinks Searchbox — adds an internal search box directly within the search result (though deprecated by Google in 2024).
- FAQs — presents commonly asked questions about the category or its products.
- Carousel — enables a swipeable format for showcasing multiple products in a single search result.
Product Page Schema Markup
Product pages benefit the most from rich results since they directly influence purchase decisions. The most commonly used schema markups for product pages are:
- Product Snippets — highlights essential product details like name, description, brand, and price.
- Breadcrumbs — clarifies site structure, helping search engines (and users) understand page hierarchy.
- Merchant Listing — allows products to appear in Google’s merchant-focused features, like Shopping results.
- Review Snippets — showcases star ratings, customer reviews, and the number of reviews, which is crucial for building trust.
- Video — embeds product demonstration videos, adding extra visual appeal to search listings.
Schema Markup Breakdown By Niche
Schema Markup Commonalities Across Niches
1. Across all niches, product snippets and Google Merchant Center listings have the highest instances of markup. This makes intuitive sense since these pages have a high transactional intent, directly contributing to a business’s online revenue.
2. Blog articles are the most neglected sections, even though they can play a significant role in building a site’s topical authority.
3. Sitelinks Searchbox was sunsetted by Google in October 2024 (markup that allowed the visual element of a search box within a Google search result) but nearly half of the websites tested still have it.
4. Breadcrumb schema is consistently used across all page types and niches, aiding site crawling & navigation.
5. Local Business Schema is underutilised and is an easy win for businesses with a local presence. That being said, an optimised Google Business Profile is still the strongest primary SEO signal to win a location pin enhancement.
6. We found invalid and erroneous markup across 15-30% of the websites, including very big brands, in every niche. This may likely be due to poor implementation, a lack of clarity on the correct schema attributes or a CMS related issue.
Below is a granular analysis for every analysed ecommerce niche
1. Home Furniture Niche
1. Furniture is a fairly competitive and broad niche. We found many old and established players (Habitat, Dunelm, Ikea), dominating the first page.
2. Product snippets had a 92% coverage across websites, followed closely by Merchant Center Listings.
3. 60% of results on the first page and 30% on the second page showed rich result enhancements.
These Rich result features included store ratings, return day policy, free delivery over a certain spend, delivery estimation, and price range. The presence of delivery estimation in search results is particularly useful for home furniture, as shipping time can be a key factor in purchasing decisions.
4. JSON-LD is the most popular markup format with 61.54% of the tested websites using it for their markup implementation.
5. A notable gap in this niche is the absence of Review Snippets and Merchant Listings schema on category pages. Without these, category pages miss an opportunity to display the overall product ratings and be displayed in merchant listing experiences such as shopping knowledge panel, Google Images, popular product results, and product snippets on Google search results.
2. Wedding Jewellery
1. Wedding Jewellery came out as one of the strongest overall niche (only second to nutritional supplements) from a markup perspective.
2. Both Product Snippets and Merchant Center Listings had equal markup coverage with 93% of the websites (14/15 websites) implementing both.
In contrast, Local Business schema had the lowest coverage, appearing on just 1 out of 15 home pages. Given that many jewellery retailers have physical storefronts, the limited use of this schema represents a missed opportunity to improve local search presence.
3. 100% of Google organic results on both pages 1 & 2 showed rich result enhancements. The most commonly observed schema enhancements included store ratings, return days, free delivery over a specific purchase amount, and price range.
4. An overwhelming 80% of websites marked up their pages using JSON-LD. Another 33% used Microdata. Some of the websites used two markup formats.
5. Something that we found unusual was the presence of Carousel schema on a category page, implemented by one of the websites. This suggests an attempt to create a visually engaging, swipeable format in search results even though a Carousel is not a Google recommended schema for eCommerce webssites.
3. Pet Products
1. 78% of the pet product websites tested had product Snippets and 64% had Merchant Center Listings.
There was a complete absence of certain schemas such as Local Businesses and yet location pins were being pulled in as a rich result enhancement. This signals that the most important factor for a location pin is still a well-optimised Google Business Profile (GBP).
2. 60% of organic results on page 1 showed a rich result enhancement. The most commonly observed schema enhancements for pet products included ratings, returns and location pins.
3. Only 57% of the websites marked up their pages using JSON-LD. Overall, this niche seems to be lagging versus others from a markup perspective.
4. We found an instance of FAQ schema on the Home page for one of the websites. As of September 14th, 2024, Google announced that they will be showing FAQs only for well known and authoritative websites.
4. Electric Bikes
1. Similar to Wedding Jewellery, Electric Bikes is a strong niche from a markup perspective. We found Merchant Listings & Product Snippets on 14 of the 16 analysed websites.
We also found limited use of Review Snippets as a potentially missed opportunity (Only 16% – 37% of pages implementing it). Customer reviews are known to influence buying decisions and can enhance credibility and click-through rates from search results.
2. 60% of Google organic results on page 1 showed a rich result enhancement. The most commonly observed schema enhancements included store ratings, return days, price range, and discount information.
3. JSON-LD dominated this niche with 90% of the websites using that as a markup format.
4. Interestingly, we found one electric bike website strategically implement valid Article and FAQ schemas on its category page, indicating an effort to target informational searches alongside product discovery.
As mentioned above, FAQ markup won’t provide any schema benefits unless your website is from one of Google’s chosen niches (government or health related). In light of the latest changes, it’s better to implement QAPage structured data instead.
5. Health Supplements
1. This is by far the strongest and most competitive niche among all analysed. We found that 100% of health supplement websites have Merchant Center Listings and Product Snippet markup.
Given the importance of reviews for supplement purchases, exploring the implementation of AggregateRating schema (a part of Review schema) on Category Pages could be beneficial. This would display star ratings and review counts directly on category listings, improving click through rates.
2. For health supplements, 100% of organic search results on page 1 and 70% on page 2 showed a rich result enhancement. The most common enhancements included review ratings & day returns.
3. 100% of the websites used JSON-LD and 21% have used Microdata.
4. The Supplements niche also seems to have a stronger focus on content and blog optimisation with a much higher use of Article schema and even one instance of receipe schema.
6. Computer Hardware
1. A significant 90% of the computer hardware websites tested implemented Product Snippets, and 80% used Merchant Center Listings.
2. We saw a high rate of rich result enhancements with 90% on page 1 and 60% on page 2. These rich results included store ratings, price ranges, percentage discounts, item return policy durations, and even location pins.
3. The vast majority (90%) of websites utilised the JSON-LD format for schema markup.
4. The adoption of Carousel schema was even higher in the computer hardware niche, with 30% of websites using it.
7. Online Courses
1. We found Online courses to have the most dense schema markup coverage among all niches.
2. A significant 53% of online course websites are leveraging schema specifically designed for their content, implementing both Course List Item and Course Info on their course (product) pages. This indicates a good understanding of how to mark up course offerings for search engines.
But interestingly, only 20% of the websites have implemented the Product Snippets and Merchant Listings for their product pages.
3. Based on the low level of markup, Google only shows Courses Carousel as a rich results enhancement.
3. 60% of the websites marked up their pages using JSON-LD while 20% used Microdata.
4. Google primarily shows Courses Carousel rich results for the Online Course niche. However, only 20% of websites using Carousel schema markup are appearing in those results. This is a clear missed opportunity to improve their search presence.
Marketplaces: Amazon, Alibaba, Ebay
We also tested the 3 largest marketplaces – Amazon, Alibaba, and Ebay – independently.
The results for all three were rather disappointing:
1. Amazon had no schema markup at all on any pages.
2. Alibaba and Ebay had some markup across their product and category pages.
Schema Markup Research Study Main Take-aways
Our study highlights a clear trend: 68.57% of top-ranking eCommerce pages across all niches use schema markup. This is a strong signal that structured data is a crucial part of the modern SEO technology stack.
SEO is dependent on multiple factors and it’s not possible to isolate schema alone as leading to higher rankings.
Also, Google has stated on multiple occasions that schema is not a direct ranking factor. That being said, the positive correlation between schema usage and higher search visibility is hard to ignore.
For eCommerce businesses, the message is simple:
- Audit your current structured data — Identify new opportunities as well as gaps and errors using tools like Google’s Rich Results Test.
- Implement key schema types — Prioritise the use of schema markup tailored to your niche. For example, product schema is essential for physical goods, while course schema might be more relevant for online education platforms.
Ultimately, schema markup may not guarantee you the top spot on Google, but it gives your pages a stronger chance to stand out in crowded Search results, communicate key product information clearly, and draw users in.
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