Schema Breadcrumbs and Google Taxonomy

[actolearn]

Does google's category taxonomy only apply for Shopping search or can I use it for my product ecommerce site that isn't in google Shopping?

In the past I used it in my product feeds and it worked great. Can't afford to pay to show up in Shopping so now I will incorporate schema into my product pages, including "breadcrumb" for each product page and hopefully that will help me show up more in organic search.

That got me wondering about using a META schema breadcrumb incorporating google's taxonomy for each product page. Has anyone tried this?

I know I could test this myself but I made a mistake in redesigning my website once and it took me months to figure out why I had disappeared from search so I'm a little wary of just jumping in and testing something without some good advice.

[jwolthuis]

... can I use it for my product ecommerce site that isn't in Google Shopping?

Yes, you can design your taxonomy any way you'd like, but why randomly choose Google's? Why not Amazon's, or your competitors?

You know who your competitors are, so choose your market leader, name your products just like they do, clone their taxonomy, and set your pricing to be a penny less (rounded down to the nearest 0.09).

[actolearn]

Yes, well, I have to start somewhere and I'm familiar with google's taxonomy. Just wondering if someone has used this taxonomy and combined it with schema and used as a meta tag or if that taxonomy should only be used for google SHOPPING.