How can product markup describe an intended age range and gender?

Definition: Product markup describes an intended audience with an audience property whose value is a PeopleAudience object. In that object, suggestedGender describes the suggested gender and suggestedMinAge or suggestedMaxAge describes an age boundary in years.

Key facts

• Google's merchant listing documentation treats audience as optional product information and supports only the PeopleAudience type for it.
• The supported gender values are https://schema.org/Male, https://schema.org/Female, and Unisex; raw male and female values are also accepted.
• suggestedMinAge and suggestedMaxAge are numeric values in years. Google also documents suggestedAge.minValue and suggestedAge.maxValue as alternatives.
• Google's age mappings use fixed values such as 0.25, 1.0, 5.0, and 13.0, with the exact meaning depending on whether the boundary is minimum or maximum age.
• Schema.org defines PeopleAudience as a set of characteristics belonging to people who compose an item's target audience.

How is the audience represented in product markup?

As of 8 September 2026, Google's merchant listing documentation places audience information inside the product's recommended properties. The audience value has type PeopleAudience, and the documentation points to Schema.org for the full definition. Google's page says this property can describe the suggested gender and age group for the product.

The markup can use a nested JSON-LD object like this:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org/",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "Example product",
  "audience": {
    "@type": "PeopleAudience",
    "suggestedGender": "Unisex",
    "suggestedMinAge": 5.0,
    "suggestedMaxAge": 13.0
  }
}

PeopleAudience is a Schema.org type. Its definition describes characteristics of people who compose an item's target audience, so the object describes the intended people rather than the product's name or price.

Which gender values are documented?

Google describes suggestedGender as the suggested gender the product is suitable for. It accepts the Schema.org values https://schema.org/Male and https://schema.org/Female. Google also accepts the case-insensitive value Unisex, which the page identifies as outside the Schema.org standard and says must not use the https://schema.org/ prefix.

Schema.org describes suggestedGender as the suggested gender of the intended person or audience and gives “male”, “female”, and “unisex” as examples. Google further states that raw male and female values are accepted because it completes GenderType values without the Schema.org prefix.

How should minimum and maximum ages be encoded?

Google defines suggestedMinAge as the suggested minimum age in years and suggestedMaxAge as the suggested maximum age in years. The corresponding alternatives are suggestedAge.minValue and suggestedAge.maxValue. Schema.org gives suggestedAge the type QuantitativeValue and describes it as an age or age range, with examples expressed in months and years.

For direct age fields, Google maps the minimum boundary to 0 for newborns, 0.25 for infants, 1.0 for toddlers, 5.0 for kids, and 13.0 for adults. For the maximum boundary, the documented values are 0.25 for newborns, 1.0 for infants, 5.0 for toddlers, and 13.0 for kids. Google says the maximum-age field is unnecessary for adults.

The Google page labels these audience fields as recommended properties. It does not state that an audience object is required for merchant listing eligibility.

How can you check the markup?

Inspect the rendered product JSON-LD and confirm that audience.@type is PeopleAudience. Check that the gender value follows Google's supported forms and that each age value is numeric and expressed in years. If the product has a range, check the lower boundary against suggestedMinAge and the upper boundary against suggestedMaxAge, or inspect the equivalent suggestedAge values.

Google's documentation says that the Product markup for merchant listing experiences must include the required properties for eligibility and can include recommended properties to add more information. The audience fields are in the recommended PeopleAudience property list.

Related terms

• Structured data
• JSON-LD
• Product structured data

FAQ

Is audience required for a merchant listing?

Google lists audience under recommended product properties and describes it as optional information about the suggested audience. The page does not list it among the required product properties.

Can a product use only one age boundary?

Yes. Google documents minimum and maximum ages as separate properties. For adults, it says the maximum-age property is unnecessary.

Should Unisex have a Schema.org URL prefix?

No. Google documents Unisex without the https://schema.org/ prefix and says the value is case-insensitive. The same page accepts raw male and female values.

Sources

1. Google Search Central, "How To Add Merchant Listing Structured Data", 8 September 2026
2. Schema.org, "PeopleAudience", 16 September 2026

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