Why it matters
Google's merchant listing guide has explained validity dates for sale prices in a Sale duration section since July 2026 (its updates log calls this a clarification). Said at Search Central Live: with the dates in place, merchants need not rush to remove a sale price for fear it shows wrongly in snippets. The template must still switch back to the regular price when the sale ends: Google warns that a listing may not display if priceValidUntil is in the past. Product markup should also show current availability. The product name is required, and unlike product snippets, merchant listing experiences require a price greater than zero; an empty name and a price of zero were among the problems the Rich Results Test flagged in a community demo at the event.
How to meet it
Product with a non-empty name, image, description, sku or gtin and brand; Offer with a price above zero, priceCurrency, availability and itemCondition. For a sale, put the sale price in price, the regular price in a StrikethroughPrice UnitPriceSpecification, and bound it with validFrom and priceValidUntil (or validThrough) in ISO 8601. When the sale ends, render the regular price in price and drop the StrikethroughPrice. Keep values and dates identical to the Merchant Center feed.
How to test it
The Rich Results Test shows a valid merchant listing, the Merchant listings report has no errors, and a scheduled check confirms feed and markup prices match.
How Regensbot covers it
Decided from one URL.
An audit reads the response, the headers, the HTML, robots.txt, the sitemaps and the structured data, and the finding shows the evidence it saw.
Sources
Google documents02
- 01Merchant listing (Product, Offer) structured dataGoogle Search Central (opens in a new tab)
- 02Latest documentation updatesGoogle Search Central (opens in a new tab)
Claims in the knowledge base07
- D2-C507SourceWhat is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Google's documentation
- D2-C506ConsistentWhat is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Said on stage
- D2-C508n/aWhat is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.The author's interpretation
- D2-C012SourceWelcome to indexing day!Google's documentation
- D2-C835SourceWhat is Structured Data and why we need it on the internet.Google's documentation
- D1-C507SourceLightning session A: Automation and AIGoogle's documentation
- D1-C502ConsistentLightning session A: Automation and AISaid on stage
Claim IDs refer to the Search Central Live 2026 knowledge base. The knowledge base (opens in a new tab)
- Consistent
- Google's documentation supports it without stating it.
- Source
- The claim is the cited document itself.
- n/a
- Nothing to verify: a quotation, framing, opinion or analysis.