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CT006 – Compare-At Pricing Legality

Overview

Looks for compare-at / reference pricing markup: legitimate compare-at, price transparency, pricing consistency, pricing compliance. Score built from presence.

Probability that AI systems use this signal: Crawlers and generative AI pipelines consume structured and visible page signals for training and inference. Assessment-specific signals (e.g. schema, canonicals, trust cues) affect how likely a page is indexed and surfaced. The probability that this assessment's signal influences AI behavior is high when the page is in a product or compliance context.

Impact on geo compliance: Passing this assessment supports geo compliance by ensuring machine-readable and visible content meet standards that reduce the risk of wrong locale, pricing, or trust in AI-generated answers. Failing can lead to non-compliant or misleading surfacing.

What We Check

  • **_extract_pricing_information:** legitimate_compare_at (compare-at|was-price|original-price|msrp, data-compare-at); price_transparency (price-transparency|price-breakdown|price-details, data-price-transparency); pricing_consistency (pricing-consistency|price-standard|price-uniform, data-pricing-consistency); pricing_compliance (pricing-compliance|price-regulation|price-standard, data-pricing-compliance).
  • **Scoring:** compare_at +30, transparency +30, consistency +25, compliance +15. **PASSED** if >= 70. details as dict. On exception: ERROR.

Pass / Fail and Score

  • **PASSED** if score >= 70. Score built from legitimate_compare_at (+30), price_transparency (+30), pricing_consistency (+25), pricing_compliance (+15). Max 100. On exception: ERROR.

How to Fix When It Fails

  • Implement legitimate compare-at pricing (e.g. MSRP, was-price); add clear price transparency; ensure consistency; add compliance indicators where required.

Common Issues

  • No compare-at or transparency/compliance markup.

Dependencies

None.

How to Verify

  • Use expected classes or data attributes for compare-at and transparency; follow local pricing regulations.

Additional Resources

  • schema.org priceSpecification — Use on Offer for unit price and delivery/payment charges; supports compare-at and transparent pricing in structured data.
  • FTC and local pricing rules: compare-at (e.g. “was $X”) and reference prices must be genuine and not misleading; ensure consistency with VC002 (price visibility) and SD007 (offers).