Commerce Protocols · Essential · Critical impact

Product/catalog schema

Product data is the most valuable and the least machine-readable: price, availability and returns are usually rendered for a person to read and never declared for a machine to parse.

Essential
Critical impact
Adopted standard

Product/catalog schema — Property, Value
Property	Value
Check id	`product-schema`
Dimension	Commerce Protocols (15%)
Tier	Essential — pool 80 pts
Weight inside tier	3
Impact	Critical
Maturity	Adopted — A ratified standard with real deployment.
Conditional	Yes — scored only on commercial sites
Publishing skill	`product-schema`
Standards	schema.org/Product

What is measured

Conditional: reported n/a and excluded from the score unless the scanner has already seen a commercial signal on the site (Product/Offer/AggregateOffer JSON-LD, an add-to-cart or buy-now action, or a cart/checkout link); this check itself never creates the signal. It then flattens the JSON-LD it holds for the homepage and, when reachable, the /products, /shop and /store paths, and passes on any "@type": "Product", "Offer" or "AggregateOffer" — a partial (0.7) when that markup exists only on a product or collection page, and a fail when no such type is found anywhere.

Reproduce it yourself

You do not have to take our word for any of this. Run the same measurement against your own domain:

              DOMAIN=shop.example.com
for p in / /products /shop; do printf '%s: ' "$p"; curl -sL "https://$DOMAIN$p" | grep -Eo '"@type"[[:space:]]*:[[:space:]]*"(Product|Offer|AggregateOffer)"' | sort -u | tr '\n' ' '; echo; done

The fix

This is the artifact to ship. It is the complete change, not a description of one.

              <!-- /products/aurora-desk-lamp : the product itself -->
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "Aurora Desk Lamp",
  "sku": "ADL-100-BLK",
  "description": "Dimmable LED desk lamp, 2700-5000K, USB-C.",
  "brand": { "@type": "Brand", "name": "Aurora" },
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "url": "https://shop.example.com/products/aurora-desk-lamp",
    "price": "1299.00",
    "priceCurrency": "USD",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock"
  }
}
</script>
<!-- Homepage / : the same Offer inside an ItemList, so the catalogue is readable from the root -->
<script type="application/ld+json">
{ "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "ItemList", "itemListElement": [
  { "@type": "Offer", "url": "https://shop.example.com/products/aurora-desk-lamp", "price": "1299.00", "priceCurrency": "USD", "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock" }
] }
</script>

Standards referenced

schema.org/Product

Related checks

Related checks — Check, Tier, Impact, Same skill
Check	Tier	Impact	Same skill
`payment-protocols` — Agent payment standard support (AP2/ACP/x402/UCP)	Recommended	High	—
`agent-purchase` — Agent purchase policy	Recommended	High	—
`ucp-manifest` — UCP manifest (/.well-known/ucp)	Emerging	Medium	—
`returns` — Return and shipping terms machine-readable	Recommended	Medium	—
`agent-analytics` — Agent traffic measurement	Emerging	Low	—
`inventory-freshness` — Inventory and price freshness	Recommended	High	—
`seller-identity` — Seller identity declared	Recommended	Medium	—
`shipping-costs` — Shipping cost and delivery declared	Recommended	High	—