In order to better align with the overall Google merchant guidelines, Google has updated its rich results content guidelines. The new update will disallow rich results for products that can either facilitate serious harm to self or others, and/or are widely prohibited or regulated.
These products include, but are not limited to:
- Weapons
- Recreational drugs
- Tobacco & vaping products
- Gambling-related products
New Guidelines
Google’s rich results product content guidelines now includes a section that reads:
“Don’t mark up any content that promotes widely prohibited or regulated goods, services, or information that may facilitate serious and/or long term harm to self or others. This includes content related to firearms and weapons, recreational drugs, tobacco and vaping products, and gambling-related products.”
When will this be effective from?
Google’s new rich results content guidelines update will be effective immediately. If you work on a site that sells any of the aforementioned products, it would be a good idea to remove structured data markup from those pages… or don’t; Google won’t feature them in rich results anyway.