A product variant is a version of one product that differs in an attribute such as size, color, material or pattern. In SEO, the question is how variants are marked up and which URLs they get, because every variant can create another near-identical page.
How does Google handle product variants?
Google’s structured data for variants uses a ProductGroup that holds the shared properties. variesBy names the attributes that differ, hasVariant lists the variants, and productGroupID identifies the group (the parent SKU). Each variant carries its own SKU or GTIN, and an ID given on both the group and the variant must match.
Google requires that each variant can be preselected through its own URL, for example with query parameters. On a single-page setup, where one page holds all variants, the ProductGroup needs one canonical URL. With a separate page per variant, no single canonical is required.
Retailers also decide how many variants share one page. Nielsen Norman Group advises showing variations of the same product under a single listing and giving different products their own listings.
Example
{
"@type": "ProductGroup",
"productGroupID": "tshirt-basic",
"variesBy": ["https://schema.org/color", "https://schema.org/size"],
"hasVariant": [
{ "@type": "Product", "sku": "tshirt-basic-red-m",
"url": "https://example.com/tshirt?color=red&size=m" }
]
}
Sources
- Product variants structured data – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
- Consolidate duplicate URLs – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
- Products with multiple variants – Nielsen Norman Group (secondary)nngroup.com
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