Spare part
A spare part is a replacement for a piece a product came with, such as a fridge door shelf, usually bought by someone holding the broken one.
- Replacement part
What it means
A spare part replaces something the product came with: a door shelf, a seal, a filter housing. The shopper usually has the broken piece in hand and one question, whether this part fits their model. So the part’s own identity, and the list of models it fits, matter more than anything else on the row.
Supplier files can lose both. The part arrives with no number of its own, filed under the product it fits, with the fit in a sentence such as “fits most”. Give each part its own MPN first, because every other fix leans on it. The manufacturer’s page for that MPN is the list to check the supplier’s claims against.
Schema.org has no separate property for spares. isAccessoryOrSparePartFor covers spare parts and accessories together,1 so if the difference matters to your shoppers, keep it in a column of your own.
Think of it like this
Buying a spare part is like getting a key cut. Nobody cares how the new key looks, only that it matches the old one exactly, because a near match opens nothing.
For example
A supplier row reads “Door shelf, fits most KFR models”. After cleaning, the shelf has its own MPN and the relationship Spare part for. It gets one compatibility row for each model the manufacturer’s parts list names, such as KFR-320W and KFR-325W. “Fits most” stays on the row as a flag, not a value.
Why it matters
A wrong spare means a return, and the shopper’s appliance is still broken. For a part made by a third party, Google requires the title to make clear “what kind of product customers are buying and who manufactured or refurbished it”. If you do not follow its rules, Google says “your products may be disapproved or your account suspended”.2
Not to be confused with
A spare part that fits several models is not a set of variants. For a compatible third-party part, Google’s advice is to submit it once and “list all of the product’s compatibilities in its product description”.3
Sources
- schema.org. isAccessoryOrSparePartFor.
- Google Merchant Center Help. About compatible or refurbished third-party products.
- Google Merchant Center Help. Best practices for submitting unsupported variants.