Product schema
Structured data that labels a product's name, price, availability, and details as facts, so a machine reads them directly instead of scraping them from a styled layout.
Your price is right there on the page, in a bold box, impossible for a human to miss. A machine still might read it wrong. Product schema is how you stop that.
What Product schema is
Product schema is structured data that labels a product's facts: the name, the price, whether it is in stock, the core details. Instead of a machine inferring the price from a styled element, the page states it outright.
It is usually written in JSON-LD, a small block in the page code. The reader is not a shopper. It is an engine deciding what your product is, what it costs, and whether to represent it accurately in an answer.
Why engines lean on it
A price inside a button or a decorated box is a guess for a machine. Is that the price, the old price, a shipping fee, a bundle. A labeled price is a fact it can lift without doubt.
The same goes for availability and key attributes. When the facts are labeled, an engine can describe your product the way you would, instead of approximating from layout.
The old way and the new way
The old way added Product schema for rich results: star ratings and prices under a Google listing. The aim was a better-looking search result.
The new way treats Product schema as the facts a machine quotes when it answers a question about what you sell. The page is no longer just being indexed. It is being read and reused, and the labeled facts are what gets reused.
The damaging admission
Product schema and prices are a bad combination if you forget the markup exists. You run a sale, change the visible price, and leave the labeled price untouched. Now a machine reads the label and tells people the old number, or the wrong one.
It also does not belong everywhere. A homepage or an article is not a product, and forcing Product schema onto a page that does not sell a single thing gives a machine a fact that is not true. Plugins like Yoast and Rank Math can emit a baseline version, but they do not confirm each product page carries correct, current markup after you edit.
How to check yours
Take a product page and ask three things. Is there Product schema. Is it valid. Does the labeled price, availability, and name match exactly what the page shows right now.
Run a free scan on any URL to see whether an engine reads your product facts correctly and where the markup and the page disagree. When you are ready to add or fix it, follow the guide to add Product schema in WordPress.