Boost search visibility and data accuracy with GS1 Web Vocabulary

That’s exactly what GS1 Web Vocabulary does. It's a structured vocabulary for the web, powered by GS1 Standards, designed to help businesses make their data uniform, searchable and exchangeable. But what does this mean in reality? 

• Richer product information in search engine results pages.
• Think fully filled rich snippets
• Reduces manual entry and errors
• Aligns faster with your partners data systems
• Improves supply chain efficiency
• Optimise your organic traffic
• Perform better for relevant search terms
• Help the search engine bots understand the context of your web pages

As businesses increasingly rely on digital ecosystems to share product information, consistent and standardised data becomes critical. One key tool in this space is the GS1 Web Vocabulary, a structured framework that enables businesses to communicate product and entity data clearly and effectively across the web. Whether you're a retailer, manufacturer, or developer, understanding how to get started with GS1 Web Vocabulary can help you improve data quality, enable better search visibility and supports digital transformation.

GS1 Web Vocabulary is a structured vocabulary developed by GS1, the global organisation best known for standards like barcodes and Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs). The vocabulary builds on existing web standards—particularly schema.org created by W3C—to provide a standardised way to describe products, organisations, locations and other key business entities for use in the digital world.

By using GS1 Web Vocabulary, companies can publish information in a format that search engines, e-commerce platforms and trading partners can understand and trust.

1. Understand the basics 

Start by familiarising yourself with linked data and schema.org. GS1 Web Vocabulary extends schema.org by providing additional business-specific terms. You’ll be using these terms to define product and business metadata that machines can understand. 

Good starting resources include: 

• GS1 Web Vocabulary site
• Schema.org Product Types 

2. Define your use case 

Decide what information you want to publish. Common use cases include: 

• Publishing product data for search engines and partners
• Creating digital product catalogues
• Linking physical products to digital experiences (e.g. via QR codes)

Each use case will guide the types of terms and data structures you'll need. 

3. Structure your data 

Use formats like JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) to implement GS1 Web Vocabulary in your web content. JSON-LD is lightweight, easy to integrate and recommended by search engines like Google. You can try these tools to help create the mark ups, which you can then paste into the body section of your product pages; this means its visible to the bots but not the human eye and will keep your pages looking lovely: 

GS1 Web Markup tool 

Structured Data Markup Helper 

For developers: GitHub - gs1/WebVoc: GS1 Web vocabulary development site 

You can also look at your SEO plug in tools you already use for your website as these may have the functionality already built in.

Here’s an example of mark up for a product: You’ll notice the data is structured into pairs 

{ 

"@context": "https://gs1.org/voc/", 

"@type": "Product", 

"gtin": "0123456789012", 

"name": "Organic Apple Juice", 

"brand": { 

"@type": "Brand", 

"name": "NatureFresh" 

}, 

"description": "100% organic apple juice, no added sugar.", 

"image": "https://example.com/images/apple-juice.jpg" 

}

4. Validate your data 

Use tools like: 

• Google’s Rich Results Test
• Schema Markup Testing Tool | Google Search Central | Google for Developers
• GS1 Digital Link Validator 

These tools ensure your structured data is correctly formatted and understood by platforms. 

5. Publish and monitor 

Embed the structured data into your product pages or data portals. After publishing, monitor how it’s used—particularly how search engines and partners interpret it. This is particularly important – look at metrics such as organic traffic numbers, these should go up and page bounce rates, these should go down.