Answer
Dec 09, 2024 - 01:30 PM
As Google has updated how it shows results for ecommerce related searches, a big part of this change is as they've started showing these "Popular Products" tables and we've seen these taking over the #1 spots for more and more queries since January 2024 and seems to be increasing with every new update. These "Popular Products" tables are displayed like this....see this result for "basketballs".
Note that this isn't clicking into the "Shopping" tab...it's just the default result....and it's now showing over Amazon's "Basketballs" category page. You'll also see that right under that historically "traditional" result....there is another table of these "Popular Products". These results are any product page with product structured data....which Google announced who would be eligible for these results back in 2022. So, it's not only merchants in merchant center...it's any product page with product structured data (we've run into many merchants who don't realize this).
Now....once you're listed we've seen an interesting activity if you're not using Merchant Center. We've run into several scenarios where a site's product pages that were displaying in results within the "Popular Products" tables....but then all the sudden it disappears for 2-4 days from the results completely. But we've then seen the results pop back in after a couple days and then everything is fine from there...until perhaps two or three months later when it happens again....but then again rebounds.
When we've witnessed this happen, we noticed it on a site that is not in Google Merchant Center.....so as we've watched this happen we cant help but wonder if Google refreshes it's index every now and then and perhaps prioritizes the products that ARE in merchant center...but then gets back down to the sites and products that simply have Product Structured data which also drives these results. This is the best explanation that we can think of for this activity....so don't panic if you see your products disappear for a couple days and come back after. The good news is, when you have actual "people first helpful content" we've seen these results come back with a vengeance many times.....taking over several spots within the top 10 results of these Popular Products tables.
There are some specific things that we've seen have dramatically improved visibility within these results, so we'd love to help ecommerce merchants when we can give them some quick/easy wins.....you can Schedule an SEO Consultation and we'll make sure you're taken care of. Recently we've seen just a couple of relatively simple changes can make a dramatic impact for his....so please get in touch and we'll help when we can (regardless of whether you use Answerbase or not).
Note that this isn't clicking into the "Shopping" tab...it's just the default result....and it's now showing over Amazon's "Basketballs" category page. You'll also see that right under that historically "traditional" result....there is another table of these "Popular Products". These results are any product page with product structured data....which Google announced who would be eligible for these results back in 2022. So, it's not only merchants in merchant center...it's any product page with product structured data (we've run into many merchants who don't realize this).
Now....once you're listed we've seen an interesting activity if you're not using Merchant Center. We've run into several scenarios where a site's product pages that were displaying in results within the "Popular Products" tables....but then all the sudden it disappears for 2-4 days from the results completely. But we've then seen the results pop back in after a couple days and then everything is fine from there...until perhaps two or three months later when it happens again....but then again rebounds.
When we've witnessed this happen, we noticed it on a site that is not in Google Merchant Center.....so as we've watched this happen we cant help but wonder if Google refreshes it's index every now and then and perhaps prioritizes the products that ARE in merchant center...but then gets back down to the sites and products that simply have Product Structured data which also drives these results. This is the best explanation that we can think of for this activity....so don't panic if you see your products disappear for a couple days and come back after. The good news is, when you have actual "people first helpful content" we've seen these results come back with a vengeance many times.....taking over several spots within the top 10 results of these Popular Products tables.
There are some specific things that we've seen have dramatically improved visibility within these results, so we'd love to help ecommerce merchants when we can give them some quick/easy wins.....you can Schedule an SEO Consultation and we'll make sure you're taken care of. Recently we've seen just a couple of relatively simple changes can make a dramatic impact for his....so please get in touch and we'll help when we can (regardless of whether you use Answerbase or not).
