Structured data is often installed once via a generic app or plugin and never properly checked. Done properly, it's a genuine, ongoing part of how well your products show up in search.
Get my free auditA schema plugin or app installed once and never checked again is extremely common, and extremely easy to get subtly wrong. Missing required fields, mismatched data between what's shown on the page and what's in the schema, or fields that were correct at setup but drifted as the catalogue changed all quietly reduce how well structured data actually helps.
Google's own testing tools flag outright errors, but genuinely accurate, complete structured data goes further than just passing validation.
Not directly, but it does directly affect whether your products can show rich results in search, star ratings, price, availability, which meaningfully affects click-through rate even without a ranking change.
Google's Rich Results Test and Search Console's enhancement reports both show validation errors and warnings, but a proper audit checks accuracy against what's actually shown on the page too, not just technical validity.
Sometimes, yes. Certain product categories benefit from more specific schema properties beyond the basics, and this gets accounted for in the actual implementation.
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