In a move set to streamline online shopping experiences, Google has announced a new feature allowing businesses to add return policies at the organization level. This development builds on last year’s introduction of structured data return policies for individual products, offering a more efficient way for businesses to manage and display their return policies.
Previously, businesses needed to define return policies for each product individually, a process that could become cumbersome for those with extensive inventories. The new organization-level return policy support simplifies this by enabling businesses to specify a general return policy applicable across all products.
This update not only reduces the complexity of managing return policy markup but also enhances the visibility of return policies. By implementing an organization-level return policy, businesses can have their policies displayed in a variety of search results, including knowledge panels and brand profiles, in addition to product-specific searches.
For businesses without a Merchant Center account—Google’s tool for managing product data—this new feature is especially beneficial. While Merchant Center users already have the capability to set a return policy at the business level, those without an account can now leverage this feature through structured data markup.
To assist businesses in verifying the accuracy of their new return policies, Google has updated the Rich Results Test tool. This tool allows users to submit a page URL or code snippet to check if their organization-level return policy markup is valid.
Google recommends that online or local businesses use the “OnlineStore” or “LocalBusiness” subtypes of Organization to optimize their return policy implementation.
This enhancement aims to simplify the process of providing return policies and improve their visibility across Google’s shopping experiences. For assistance with structured data on your website contact our expert technical SEO team today!
