Warning about missing return policy info

Have you received a warning from Google’s Rich Results Test or Google Search Console about a missing field called hasMerchantReturnPolicy? Then you might be wondering if there is a problem with your site. The short answer is: no. This warning doesn’t mean something is wrong with your site; it’s there because Google has updated its handling of product schema for returns policies.

Understanding Google’s update for returns policies

Recently, Google made changes to how it handles product schema for describing returns policies. In a nutshell, you can now provide details about your returns policy, including supported countries, timing constraints, return fees, return methods, and more in your site’s Schema.org structured data code. When you add this info to your structured data, you make your merchant listing eligible to show these returns policy details in Google’s search results.

Rich results require certain fields to be filled out, such as the product name, while others, like the returns policy information, are optional. Leaving out optional fields won’t hurt your performance.

Why am I getting warnings?

As a result of this update, users who haven’t defined their returns policy in their schema (so, in your site’s structured data code) are receiving warnings from Google Search Console and Google’s Rich Results Test. If you rely on Yoast WooCommerce SEO or Yoast SEO for Shopify for your product schema, this is probably the case.

After careful consideration, we have decided not to support Google’s new returns policy schema at this time. This is mainly because WooCommerce and Shopify lack structured inputs for defining returns policies, and creating and managing an entire interface solely for this purpose would be resource-intensive for us.

What should I do?

So, what should you do when you receive a warning about missing returns policy information? Well, in most cases, you won’t need to do, change, or fix anything. Your product schema is valid. The schema that is missing (MerchantReturnPolicy) is optional, and leaving out optional schema won’t hurt your performance.

If you would like to request Yoast to support returns policy schema in Yoast WooCommerce SEO or Yoast SEO for Shopify, please reach out to our support team.

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