Fix for New Search Console Error: Either “offers”, “review”, or “aggregateRating” should be specified

by | Mar 1, 2019 | Web Development | 32 comments

In the last couple of weeks, Google has been releasing a lot of changes to Search Console. These changes range from cross-domain analytics to new enhancements. While most of these changes haven’t had much of an impact on users, the addition of the “Products” enhancement has created a headache for nearly every eCommerce website.

If you’ve recently found a large number of errors or warnings, don’t fret, you’re not alone. The Products report was added to search console in late February, and with it came an abundance of warnings and an error titled: Either “offers”, “review”, or “aggregateRating” should be specified. The Products report can be found under the enhancements section in Google Search Console. This article will explain the meaning and effects of the errors and warnings, and provide a fix for people using WooCommerce.

 

The New Error in Google Search Console

The most frustrating part of the errors and warnings is that the problem and solution are not very clearly explained by Google. Each warning’s Learn More button sends people to the exact same page, and the information provided isn’t very user-friendly.

When you look at the details on search console, you will see the following error: Either “offers”, “review”, or “aggregateRating” should be specified. This error will likely affect a large number of your products.

You will also see a wide range of warnings, including Missing field “brand”, Missing field “SKU”, Missing Field “offers”, and more.

Google Search Console Products Error Fix

These errors and warning relate to the product markup and schema for individual products on your site. If certain schema aren’t specified, rich results won’t be able to appear in search alongside your products. Rich results (formerly called rich snippets) are additional pieces of information that can be shown about the product. You’ll usually only see products names, images, price, and occasionally ratings in search results, but other pieces of structured information can also be shown on occasion.

Google encourages eCommerce sites to use all possible product markups, as it can increase click through rate.

The Either “offers”, “review”, or “aggregateRating” should be specified error occurs when a product does not contain structured content for any of the 3 specified schema. Google wants the ability to display the title, image, and one “reason to buy” of every product in their search results, and these three schema all qualify as a reason to buy. More specifics about these three product schema can be found at schema.org.

The warnings on the page refer to one single piece of structured content that isn’t marked.

 

Effects this has on your website

Some users are reporting a decrease in rankings after finding this error, but not everyone is experiencing this issue. Remember, this addition to search console doesn’t mean Google changed their ranking algorithm, it is simply a new report. Google has not changed their standards on what is or isn’t required for product markup.

The errors likely aren’t hurting your ranking in search, but if you’ve seen a decrease in traffic you should try to fix them as quickly as possible. The warning on the Product report will not hurt your ranking at all, and therefore aren’t as high priority.

 

Either “offers”, “review”, or “aggregateRating” should be specified: Caused by WooCommerce

If you have a website that uses WooCommerce, you should have the following schema specified by default: Name, Description, URL, SKU, Availability, Image, Offers, AggregateRating, Price, Review, and more.  That means that every product on your website should be exempt from this error. The error messages usually aren’t stemming from your product pages themselves. You can find these in the page source by searching for “schema” or “@type” and finding the long line of code near the bottom of the page. It will look something like this without the breaks.

Offers, review, or aggregate rating error fix

If you look closely at the products in the error, you’ll likely notice that all the errors are about various products on your archive or category pages. This is because WooCommerce puts the “name” product markup on every item in the categories. After Google reads the name markup, it views it as a new product that is now missing offers, review, and/or aggregateRating. When you examine the page source on these afflicted category pages, you will find a list of markup located right after the “/footer”. This is where the errors come from.

Google says that archive and category pages shouldn’t have this markup. There are only two types of pages that will usually use markup, according to Google: A product page dedicated to a single product, or a “shopping aggregator page” that talks about a single product just with different sellers. WooCommerce adding schema markup to a page that is not dedicated to a single product is what causes the errors. 

 

How to Fix Either “offers”, “review”, or “aggregateRating” should be specified error

If you’re receiving the Either “offers”, “review”, or “aggregateRating” should be specified error on your WooCommerce category pages, there is a fairly simple fix: Remove the product schema markup from the Shop and Product Category pages.

To do that, you’ll want to add the following code to your theme’s functions.php file:

 

/**
 * Remove the generated product schema markup from Product Category and Shop pages.
 */
function wc_remove_product_schema_product_archive() {
	remove_action( 'woocommerce_shop_loop', array( WC()->structured_data, 'generate_product_data' ), 10, 0 );
}
add_action( 'woocommerce_init', 'wc_remove_product_schema_product_archive' );

 

We have tested this code with multiple sites and it has been successful every time. It will remove the markup that WooCommerce places in the category pages and shop, and should remove the errors (search console make take a while to clear out). Remember that eCommerce sites and functions can be very finicky, so if you don’t normally work with code it would be best to consult a developer to insert the function.

After placing the functions in the code, check your page source to make sure the list of product schema are gone. If all the errors in the Product report are on category pages, archives, or the main shop page, you can select validate changes and get the errors removed sooner.

Note that this code will not fix all of the warnings that also appear in the report (although it will fix some). WooCommerce will address these in their next update, and these missing fields won’t hurt your search ranking in the meantime. The only required markup for products are the product name and image, so missing a brand name or “offer available until” specification shouldn’t be anything to worry about.

 

What This Fix Will Do

There shouldn’t be any downside to using this code snippet, as we have seen no issues with functionality. If you’re concerned about negative SEO effects, removing markup on the category pages won’t hurt the search ranking of the category pages. If anything, it will help your rankings now that Google has more clarity about the meaning of the page and which pages are single product pages.

We hope this helped you fix the Either “offers”, “review”, or “aggregateRating” should be specified Google Search Console error for your WooCommerce site.

 

If you need help removing the Either “offers”, “review”, or “aggregateRating” should be specified error from your WooCommerce site, we can help. Our team of experts specializes in WordPress, and manages a number of successful WooCommerce website like yours. Contact us and we’ll work with you to improve the search appearance or design of your eCommerce pages and can help you with any problems that may arise on Search Console.

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