Google Adds Certification Markup to Merchant Listings

Google has updated its Search documentation today, 3 October 2026, to add support for Certification markup in merchant listings, giving online retailers another way to describe regulated product certifications in search.

The change appears in Google Search Central’s official documentation update log. Google says the new support is intended to replace the older EnergyConsumptionDetails approach with the more flexible Certification type, which can cover a wider range of certification data.

For UK ecommerce businesses, the practical point is simple: if a product carries recognised certification information, Google can now understand that data through merchant listing structured data. This may be especially relevant for products where energy efficiency, regulatory information or other formal certifications help shoppers compare options.

What changed?

• New supported markup: Google now documents Product.hasCertification using the Certification type.
• Older markup still works: Google says the previous hasEnergyConsumptionDetails pattern remains supported for backwards compatibility.
• Merchant listings are the target: the change applies to product pages eligible for merchant listing experiences in Google Search.

Google’s Merchant Center guidance explains that certification data can include information required by local regulations, such as energy efficiency ratings. For supported certifications, merchants can provide details such as the authority, certification name and identification code.

Do UK WooCommerce stores need to change anything immediately? Not every store does. A business selling ordinary products without relevant certification data may have nothing to add. Stores selling appliances, lighting, vehicles or other regulated products should check whether their existing product schema still reflects the information visible to customers.

WooCommerce sites should also avoid adding schema simply because a property exists. The markup needs to match the product information shown on the page. Core Web UK’s technical SEO checks include validating structured data against the live content, while our WooCommerce maintenance checklist covers the wider product, checkout and update checks that keep a store commercially usable.

The main gap in the current search results is practical implementation. Google’s documentation explains the supported properties in depth, but UK store owners mainly need to know whether the change applies to their products, whether older markup can stay in place and whether their ecommerce platform is already generating the correct schema.

Google’s update confirms that existing EnergyConsumptionDetails markup does not need to be removed immediately. Where possible, however, Google now recommends using hasCertification with the supported Certification properties.