Category Page as Shopping Aggregator Page

[Alexcox6]

Hi,

I have been reviewing the info from Google on structured data for products and started to ponder. 
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/products

Here is the scenario.
You have a Category Page and it lists 8 products, each products shows an image, price and review rating. As the individual products pages are already marked up they display Rich Snippets in the serps. 
I wonder how do we get the rich snippets for the category page. Now Google suggest a markup for shopping aggregator pages that lists a single product, along with information about different sellers offering that product but nothing for categories.

My ponder is this, Can we use the shopping aggregator markup for category pages to achieve the coveted rich results (from and to price, average reviews)?

Keen to hear from anyone who has had any thoughts on the matter or had already tried this.

[Moreleads]

Hi Alex Cox,

I understand why you would want to do this and i have seen instances where this was done (not with the shoping aggregator markup but using the product markup with aggregateratings) and they got the rich snippets in the serps, like you mention. But for how long?

The point though is that your not following the intentions of the schema markups.  These reviews that you would be using on the category would be from people reviewing your products and not the category itself.  Hence you are gaming the system.

I´ve had the urge in the past (had to use some restrain) but refrained from doing it because at the end of the day you are eluding your users and thats not good business in the long run.

Hope my thoughts helped

[Alexcox6]

Hi Ramon van den Ende,

Thank you for your reply. Good to see that someone else had the same thoughts. I agree this certainly is gaming the system but isn't that what we as SEO's have been doing since the start

I do think that in practice it would work but again to to your point how long would it last for before big G cottons on and decides to stop showing the results.

This is exactly the kind of discussion I was after.

Alex