> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.get-ryze.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Product variant markup

> How to handle Shopify product variants for SEO: when variants deserve their own URL, how to mark up variant-level pricing, and how to avoid duplicate content.

Variants — size, colour, material — are where Shopify SEO most often goes quietly wrong. The same product appears at multiple URLs with near-identical content, or variants are invisible because they exist only behind a picker.

## When a variant deserves its own URL

Give a variant its own indexable URL when **people search for it specifically** and it has distinguishing content.

| give its own URL                          | keep on the parent page               |
| ----------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------- |
| Colour, when people search by colour      | Size, in most cases                   |
| Materially different models               | Minor trim differences                |
| Different price points and specifications | Identical spec, different quantity    |
| Variants with their own imagery and copy  | Variants indistinguishable in content |

The test: would this variant page have anything unique to say? If not, it is a duplicate, and duplicates dilute rather than add.

## Shopify's variant URLs

Shopify exposes variants as query parameters:

```
/products/trail-boot?variant=41234567890
```

By default these are canonicalised to the parent product URL. That is usually correct — but it also means variant pages are not independently indexable, so a variant people search for specifically will not have its own page.

Where a variant genuinely warrants targeting, the usual approach is a separate product with a canonical relationship managed deliberately, not a parameter.

## Marking up variants

Where a page presents several variants at different prices, do not mark up a single arbitrary price. Options:

**Use `AggregateOffer`** for a price range:

```json theme={null}
"offers": {
  "@type": "AggregateOffer",
  "lowPrice": "89.00",
  "highPrice": "149.00",
  "priceCurrency": "GBP",
  "offerCount": 6,
  "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock"
}
```

**Or use `ProductGroup`** with `hasVariant` entries, which describes the relationship explicitly and is preferred where variants have distinct GTINs and prices.

The rule that matters: **markup must match what the page displays.** Marking up the lowest variant price while the page shows the highest is a violation.

## Avoiding variant duplicate content

* Ensure canonicals point to the intended URL, consistently
* Do not generate a separate indexable page per size
* Do not let variant parameters accumulate crawlable combinations — see [faceted navigation](/shopify/faceted-navigation)
* Check Search Console for "Duplicate, Google chose different canonical"

## Out-of-stock variants

An out-of-stock variant should not make the whole product look unavailable. Mark availability at the level it actually applies, and keep the product page live while any variant is purchasable.

## Related

* [Product structured data on Shopify](/shopify/product-schema)
* [Fixing duplicate content and canonicals](/shopify/duplicate-content)