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.
Truncated product names
-
Due to the restraints of category page layout many of the products in certain categories have the product titles truncated, in some cases missing off 2-5 words depending on the product in question. The product name which displays on the category page is lifted straight from the product page itself, so not possible to do something like "product name including spec..." to place ... to indicate a bit more.
I'm assuming not but just wanted to check that Google will not frown on this. Text is not being hidden it just does not render fully in the restricted space. So there is a scenario of 'bits of' text in the source not displaying on the rendered page.
-
If you had two different source codes served via user-agent (web-user vs googlebot) then you'd be more at risk of this. I can't categorically state that there is no risk in what you are doing, as Google operates multiple mathematical algorithms to determine when 'cloaked' content is being used - and guess what? Sometimes they go wrong
That being said, I don't believe your risk of garnering a penalty is particularly high with this type of thing
These are the guidelines:
You're in a really gray area because, you aren't serving different URLs - but you _could _be serving different content (albeit only slightly). I say 'could' rather than 'are' as it entirely depends upon whether Google (on any particular crawl) decides to enable rendered crawling or not
If Google uses rendered crawling, and they take the content from their headless-browser page-render (which they can do, but don't always choose to as it's a more intensive crawling technique) then your content is actually the same for users and search engines. If however they just do a base-source scrape (which they also do frequently) and they take the content from the source code (which doesn't contain the visual cut-off) then you are serving different content to users and search engines
Because you've got right down into a granular area where the rules may or may not apply conditionally, I wouldn't think the risk was very high. If you ever get any problems, your main roadblock will be explaining the detail of the problem on Google's Webmaster Forums here. Support can be very hit and miss
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
-
When should a variant be a variant and when should it be a separate product from an SEO POV?
Hi all, We are looking at changing our current e-commerce store to a new platform and in doing so thinking of making some changes to how we list products in sub-categories. We have seen related questions asking about splitting a single product into multiple products to rank for different terms, but we are wondering about combining multiple products into a single product page? The examples we have seen have been about fashion items with variants of colour and size. However, the products we sell have variances that change the appearance, dimensions and technical specification, so we would like to ask the MOZ community if combining products with these variances would still be deemed good practice? We sell wood burning stoves and a good example of a product that we are considering combining is the Scan 85 stove, which is available in eight different configurations: 85-1, 85-2, 85-3 etc. Scan themselves refer to each version as a separate product and they are bought, stocked and sold as separate products. Wood burning stoves like this typically have a firebox in the centre and then design options that can change the top, side, base, door, colour and fuel. In this example, the firebox is the Scan 85 and the variation is the last number, each of which corresponds to a different design option changing both the appearance and dimensions (see attached image). We have them listed as eight different products on our current site, one for each version. Primarily because each option has its own name (albeit 1-digit difference) which when we created the pages we thought that more pages would present us with more ranking opportunity. However, we have since learnt that because these eight pages are all so similar and it is difficult to write unique content about each product (with the 85-1 and 85-2 the only difference between the models are the black trim on the 85-1 and the silver trim on 85-2). Especially as when talking about the firebox itself, how well the fire burns, how controllable it is etc, will be the same for all versions. Likewise, earning backlinks to eight separate pages is also very difficult. Exploring this lead, us to the question, when is a variant a variant and when is it a separate product? Are there hard and fast rules for what defines variants and products? Or does it simply vary from industry to industry product to product, and if so should we be looking at it from a UX or SEO POV, when making that decision? Our hope is that if we combine these eight products into a single high-quality page, it will present us with a greater ranking opportunity for that one page over eight individual pages. We also hope that in doing so will allow us to create a more intuitive UX on a single page with a unique description, more reviews focused on one page and an explanation of the options available, all of which should lead to more conversions. Finally, by creating a better UX and unique detailed description we hope that there is a higher chance of us earning product level backlinks then we do with eight lower quality pages. One of the issues in creating a single product page for all the variants is the sub-category/results pages, as we would be removing eight simple products and replacing them with one complex product. We have questions over how this would work from a filter/facet level whereby when you apply a filter there is an expectation that the image shown will match the criteria, so if we filter for stoves with a silver trim for example, there is an expectation to only see stoves that have a silver trim in the results. When you have separate product pages you have separate listings which makes this easier to only bring back the models matching the criteria. However, when you have a single page this is more complex as you will need a default image for non-filtered results and then the ability to assign an image to lots of different attributes so that the correct image is always shown that matches the criteria selected. All of which we have been assured is do-able but adds an extra level of complexity to the process from an admin side. The alternative to doing this would be to create eight simple/child products and link them to one configurable/parent product. We could them list the simple products into the results pages and have them all linking back to the main configurable product which could load with the options of the simple product that was selected. From an SEO POV this brings in some more work, redirecting each page to the parent, but ultimately this could provide a better UX and might be the better solution. Has anyone got any experience in doing either of these options before? Both options above with affect the number of products we have available, so does the number of products in a sub-category effect the ability for that category page to rank? We currently have around 500 products in our wood burning stoves category, with perhaps an additional 300 to add. If we go down the combining into a single product page route this will reduce the number of products by around a third. If we keep all the simple/child products, then this will stay around the same. So, have we missed something obvious? Is there a glaring issue that we have overlooked from an SEO point of view as well as from the customer experience? We would appreciate your thoughts on this. Thanks, Reece scan85-1.jpg
Technical SEO | | fireproductsuk0 -
How to fix: Attribute name not allowed on element meta at this point.
Hello, HTML validator brings "Attribute name not allowed on element meta at this point" for all my meta tags. Yet, as I understand, it is essential to keep meta-description for SEO, for example. I read a couple of articles on how to fix that and one of them suggests considering HTML5 custom data attribute instead of name: Do you think I should try to validate my page? And instead of ? I will appreciate your advise very much!
Technical SEO | | kirupa0 -
Product Variations (rel=canonical or 301) & Duplicate Product Descriptions
Hi All, Hoping for a bit of advice here please, I’ve been tasked with building an e-commerce store and all is going well so far. We decided to use Wordpress with Woocommerce as our shop plugin. I’ve been testing the CSV import option for uploading all our products and I’m a little concerned on two fronts: - Product Variations Duplicate content within the product descriptions **Product Variations: - ** We are selling furniture that has multiple variations (see list below) and as a result it creates c.50 product variations all with their own URL’s. Facing = Left, Right Leg style = Round, Straight, Queen Ann Leg colour = Black, White, Brown, Wood Matching cushion = Yes, No So my question is should I 301 re-direct the variation URL’s to the main product URL as from a user perspective they aren't used (we don't have images for each variation that would trigger the URL change, simply drop down options for the user to select the variation options) or should I add the rel canonical tag to each variation pointing back to the main product URL. **Duplicate Content: - ** We will be selling similar products e.g. A chair which comes in different fabrics and finishes, but is basically the same product. Most, if not all of the ‘long’ product descriptions are identical with only the ‘short’ product descriptions being unique. The ‘long’ product descriptions contain all the manufacturing information, leg option/colour information, graphics, dimensions, weight etc etc. I’m concerned that by having 300+ products all with identical ‘long’ descriptions its going to be seen negatively by google and effect the sites SEO. My question is will this be viewed as duplicate content? If so, are there any best practices I should be following for handling this, other than writing completely unique descriptions for each product, which would be extremely difficult given its basically the same products re-hashed. Many thanks in advance for any advice.
Technical SEO | | Jon-S0 -
Product Images with organic results in SERP
Hey Mozzers, I've noticed that several of our product page results in Google have the product image associated with them. Today is the first day I've seen this. Does anyone know anything about these? Has Google put anything out about this? Here's a couple examples: http://content.screencast.com/users/Will_Swales/folders/Jing/media/08a16dcf-505e-443c-866d-fae6d805743e/2014-03-31_1031.png http://content.screencast.com/users/Will_Swales/folders/Jing/media/04972e7b-f6b2-4e78-ab11-95c52d69a200/2014-03-31_1056.png What's interesting is that they don't show for me when I use Chrome's Incognito mode. Any insights much appreciated! Will
Technical SEO | | evoNick4 -
Using the word "FREE" in domain name
Hi, This may seem like a simple question but a new client of mine wishes to use a domain name with the word "free" in it. The website will offer free activity vouchers. I couldn't see this being a problem as there a lot of websites that do this although he was told it may present a problem with the search engines thinking the site was spammy. It won't be and will be offering information and vouchers on local sporting activities. I was wondering if anybody could clarify this please so I can give him a more definitive answer to his question. Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | malinkymedia0 -
How well do .ltd.uk domain names rank?
Hi all, do .ltd.uk domain names rank well? How well do they stack up against a .com or .co.uk? I'd really appreciate any feedback from people with any experience with these domains. Thanks John
Technical SEO | | john251810100 -
Google truncating or altering meta title - affect rankings?
I have a site that the title tag is too long and the title is simply the name of the site (I think they get it from ODP, not sure) Anyway, the rankings for the home page have dropped quite a bit. I'm wondering if the change that Google makes affects rankings (i.e. name of site doesn't have all the keywords).
Technical SEO | | santiago230 -
How to 301 multiple domain names to a single domain
Hey, I tried to find and answer to this seemingly simple question, but no luck. So, I have one domain name with a website attached to it. I also registered all the other domain names that are similar to it or have different extensions - I want to redirect all the other domain names to my one main domain name without getting penalised by the big G. It looks like this: www.mainsite.com - this is my main domain I also have www.mainsite.com.au, www.mainsite.org, and www.mainsite.org.au which I all want to just redirect to www.mainsite.com I have been told that the best way to do this is a 301 redirect, but to do that you need to make a CNAME for all the other domains that points to www.mainsite.com. My problem is that I cannot seem to create a CNAME record for http://mainsite.com - I have it working for http://www.mainsite.com but not the non www record. What should I be doing differently? Is it just my DNS provider is useless? Thanks, Anthony
Technical SEO | | Grenadi0