<b>The returns-policy field nobody told you became load-bearing</b>

<b>The returns-policy field nobody told you became load-bearing</b>

Quietly, the <code>hasMerchantReturnPolicy</code> property went from "nice to have" to a gatekeeper for the merchant listing experience in Google's free listings. Sites shipping Product markup without a valid <code>MerchantReturnPolicy</code> node started seeing "Return policy missing" warnings in the Merchant listings report — not errors, but enough to suppress the enriched treatment in shopping surfaces.

The catch sources in the SERPs keep missing: the policy can live on the Product node OR be inherited from an <code>Organization</code>-level policy. Most CMS plugins only do the former, so you double-declare and trip duplicate warnings.

What it means for you — if you run product pages, audit whether your policy is per-product or org-wide and pick one. Watch this: shipping details (<code>shippingDetails</code>) are on the same trajectory.