Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Has anyone seen a ranking boost by adding a GTIN (barcode)
-
Hi All,
I wondered if anyone has seen any ranking improvements from adding a GTIN (barcode) number to their product pages?
-
Thought I'd provide a bit of an update on this one for you all, I add the gtin number to two different products one gtin was added as a product attribute (text and number) and the other was added with schema markup (Gtin14 - https://schema.org/gtin14).
I've seen no ranking boost to either product on the keywords I'm tracking for them however, I have seen a small increase in traffic to the product which uses schema markup. From what I can tell from my analytics it would appear that some users actually search google using the gtin number!
It seems as if gtin14 isnt widely used at present and as such I'm ranking in top spot. So i'm thinking of adding the gtin to all our products as a bit of a quick win to rank top for a small percentage of searches.
i suppose it all depends on what products your selling and your user demographic as to wether your potential customers would ever search using the gtin? My personal view after some more reading (gs1 smart search, formally gtin on the web - http://www.gs1.org/gs1-smartsearch) is that gtin is going to become more prominent in the not too distant future, but hey I'm no expert. I'd love to know if anyone else has tested this out or if they try it and get the same results as I have?
-
Thanks for the response Dmitrii, I haven't seen the GTIN used anywhere so it got me thinking. I try testing it and see what happens.
Cheers Jon
-
Hi there.
I personally haven't seen any ranking boost from barcodes, in fact I don't think I've ever seen barcodes being used on websites at all

However, even if Google can read and understand what barcodes stand for, it would get only the name of product, maybe SKU number, manufacturer etc. - none of the important stuff. You gonna have all that information on a page anyway, but what would make a difference is compelling description, which is not transferrable with barcodes.
So, no, I haven't seen boost, I don't think it would help no matter if Google can understand barcodes or not.
Hope this helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Shifting target keyword to a new page, how do we rank the internal page?
I have been targeting one keyword for home page that was ranking between the postilion 6-7 but was never ranking on 1st as there were 2 highly competitive keywords targeted on the same page, I changed the keyword to an internal service page to rank it on 1st, I have optimized the content as well but the home page is still ranking on 11th, how do I get the internal page rank on that keyword
On-Page Optimization | | GOMO-Gabriel0 -
Thoughts on adding "near me" to title tag for local SEO?
I want to lean out my title tags and will most likely be doing an A/B test. They currently have the "Near Me" modifier in there, which I believe Google can distinguish local SEO without it. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | imjonny1230 -
How to change images of a page without loosing ranking?
Hi, I have two reasons to change some images of a page on a wordpress site: 1.Google speed service advise me to optmize the images size to better spead load times. 2.I want to change images titles (to improve seo optimization for the page keyword), so i need to replace them, since im using wordpress. Now the question is: Can i just change the images without worring about any related seo issues? Or should i follow some best practice to change images in order to not affect the ranking of the page? tx for your support!
On-Page Optimization | | Dreamrealemedia0 -
Hey guys! I was looking at adding the H1 tag lower on the page than the H2 tag because I want the top bit to be a call to action. Is this proper practice?
Hey guys! I was looking at adding the H1 tag lower on the page than the H2 tag because I want the top bit to be a call to action. Is this proper practice?
On-Page Optimization | | Web3Marketing870 -
Does a phone number in the title tag hurt your rankings in SERP?
Hi Mozzers, One of my client is a carpet cleaner and I was wondering if adding a phone number into the title tags would hurt our rankings . I am asking because the client has mentioned it and that we do have some space to add a phone number into the tag. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
I have two pages ranking for the same keyword.
The index page and the targeted landing page for that keyword. They have different content, title, meta but I am competing with myself for the main keyword in the industry. What is the best way to fix this? 301 the keyword page to the index page?
On-Page Optimization | | Aftermath_SEO0 -
Do images on a CDN affect my Google Ranking?
I have recently switched my images to a CDN (MaxCDN) and all of the images within my post are now get loaded directly from the CDN. Will this affect my Google ranking? Do Google care if the image is hosted physicaly on the domain?
On-Page Optimization | | Amosnet0 -
Should you try to rank for misspelled keywords?
Hi there, 2 part question: Is it best practice to try to rank for misspelled keywords that bring in lots of traffic or should you instead just try to rank for the correct spelling of that keyword and hope that you rank better on the misspelling as an indirect result? E.G. The misspelled keyword "Hamilton island accomodation" is a common misspelling that brings in traffic but we have an "F" rank for that term (obviously because we spell accommodation correctly on our site). We don't want to misspell anything but are there techniques to rank better for misspellings that won't hurt content quality? The On-Page Optimization tool says that our website doesn't rank in the top 50 on Google Aus for "Accomodation Hamilton Island" or "Hamilton Island Accomodation" but when i do a manual search, we actually are the first result. Is this an error with the On-Page optimization tool? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | HamiltonIsland0