Telling Google that your Shopify store sells used products

Lauryn sells vintage jewelry so she recently asked me how to change JSON-LD for SEO so her items are marked as used items in the structured data.

She needed this for Google Merchant Center. Google Search doesn’t care about the item condition but Merchant Center does.

In Shopify, there isn’t any way to set an item’s condition so the few themes that have that structured data will just mark them as new items.

JSON-LD for SEO by default assumes your products are new as well, but there’s an option to switch the condition to used products if needed.

Storewide

The first option is to set a Shopify metafield for your store that will tell the app that every item in your store is used. This is good for stores that only sell used products like antiques.

To set the condition of your products across the entire store in JSON-LD for SEO, go to Settings -> Product.

Alternatively, you can use Shopify’s Metafields or your favorite metafield tool and set the following metafield for your store itself.

• object: Shop
• type: single line text (or string depending on the tool)
• namespace: jsonld
• key: itemCondition
• value: UsedCondition

Per product

The second option also uses metafields but instead of setting the item condition store-wise, you can set it for a specific product. Again, you can use Shopify’s Metafields or your favorite metafield tool and set the following metafield for each product.

• object: Product
• type: single line text (or string depending on the tool)
• namespace: jsonld
• key: itemCondition
• value: UsedCondition

Similarly, if you have refurbished products, you can use the following at the Shop or Product level:

• type: single line text (or string depending on the tool)
• namespace: jsonld
• key: itemCondition
• value: RefurbishedCondition

 

This process will take more time because you’re setting each individual product to be used but it’ll let you sell a mix of new and used products.

Hopefully, in the future Shopify will have better support for used products.

If you sell used products and you’re not using JSON-LD for SEO yet, there’s a good chance your theme is telling Google that your products are new. This can wreak havoc on Merchant Center and cause confusion in general about your products.

If you sell only new products, when was the last time you checked your structured data? You still might have some work to do to get your data quality up.