# variesBy

Indicates the property or properties by which the variants in a [ProductGroup](https://schema.org.ai/ProductGroup) vary, e.g. their size, color etc. Schema.org properties can be referenced by their short name e.g. "color"; terms defined elsewhere can be referenced with their URIs. Variant properties can be provided using [PropertyValue](https://schema.org.ai/PropertyValue) instead of plain [Text](https://schema.org.ai/Text), to allow specification of the values available for a variant property.

## Expected Types

| Type | Description |
|------|-------------|
| [DefinedTerm](https://schema.org.ai/DefinedTerm) | A word, name, acronym, phrase, etc. with a formal definition. Often used in the context of category or subject classification, glossaries or dictionaries, product or creative work types, etc. Use the name property for the term being defined, use termCode if the term has an alpha-numeric code allocated, use description to provide the definition of the term. Use the about property to specify what the term is about. |
| [PropertyValue](https://schema.org.ai/PropertyValue) | A property-value pair, e.g. representing a feature of a product or place. Use the 'name' property for the name of the property. If there is an additional human-readable version of the value, put that into the 'description' property. Always use specific schema.org properties when a) they exist and b) you can populate them. Using PropertyValue as a substitute will typically not trigger the same effect as using the original, specific property. |
| [Text](https://schema.org.ai/Text) | Data type: Text. |

## Used on Types

| Type | Description |
|------|-------------|
| [ProductGroup](https://schema.org.ai/ProductGroup) | A ProductGroup represents a group of [Products](https://schema.org.ai/Product) that vary only in certain well-described ways, such as by [size](https://schema.org.ai/size), [color](https://schema.org.ai/color), [material](https://schema.org.ai/material) etc. While a ProductGroup itself is not directly offered for sale, the various varying products that it represents can be. The ProductGroup serves as a prototype or template, standing in for all of the products who have an [isVariantOf](https://schema.org.ai/isVariantOf) relationship to it. As such, properties (including additional types) can be applied to the ProductGroup to represent characteristics shared by each of the (possibly very many) variants. Properties that reference a ProductGroup are not included in this mechanism; neither are the following specific properties [variesBy](https://schema.org.ai/variesBy), [hasVariant](https://schema.org.ai/hasVariant), [url](https://schema.org.ai/url). |

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Quoted from Schema.org 30.1, https://schema.org/variesBy, under CC BY-SA 3.0. Served by the Org.AI Foundation at https://schema.org.ai/variesBy.