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
-
Product Schema Markup for All Products
Hi Team, Google search console used to allow you to use their structured data markup helperhttps://www.google.com/webmasters/markup-helper/u/0/ to markup multiple product pages at once that were similar. I do not see this feature anymore with the new search console. Does anyone have a recommendation for marking up multiple product pages without having to have schema markup firing in GTM for each product page?
Technical SEO | | agrier0 -
Company name ranking
Hi all, I hope somebody can share their thoughts on the below. A web designer launched my client's new website and I have been tasked with the SEO. I was approached with an immediate problem, www.clientswebsite.co.uk was ranking 9th for their company name after being indexed by Google. The search results above www.clientswebsite.co.uk were related to my client but not all, for example a direct competitor was also ranking. I have been working on the SEO for 2-3 weeks and I just managed to get to 3rd position for the company name, and then www.clientswebsite.co.uk disappeared from page 1! And now instead, an irelevant sub page is now ranking for the company name on page 2 (a contact page). I have checked and the home page is still indexed (did a site: check). The only problem software picks up is a redirect chain (http://homepage -> http://www.homepage -> https://homepage) the web developers said it wouldn't impact rankings (when I asked them to edit the htaccess file to fix it) I've listed below the SEO tasks I completed whilst attempting to rank the company name: I set up analytics and webmaster tools, in which I set up preferred domain (www) Added a sitemap Edited meta data making sure company name was included I contacted the websites above www.clientswebsite.co.uk that were relevant and asked them to place a link linking to their new website, I was successful with a couple of these. I placed www.clientswebsite.co.uk on all of their social media profiles I reformatted headers on their home page, making sure the H1 included my client's company name I found 2 extra versions of my client's home page (not exact copies, but very similar content) that had been published, so I decided to 301 redirect these to the correct home page Activated SSL and forced to HTTPS I would really appreciate it if anyone could share their thoughts here, whether it be explanations or possible solutions Adam
Technical SEO | | SO_UK0 -
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 -
How do I customize Magento product urls?
I would like my product urls to be /category/manufacturer/name/part#. This would be the only url the item uses and how the product is accessed. It would also be used for product feeds. My first attempt was to use https://amasty.com/magento-unique-product-url.html This creates a single url but I can not customize it. Sometimes it selects the manufacturer and sometimes the category. My second attempt was with https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/custom-product-urls-seo.html I have it installed but it doesn't change the urls. Has anyone been able to do this successfully?
Technical SEO | | Tylerj0 -
Ecommerce website: Product page setup & SKU's
I manage an E-commerce website and we are looking to make some changes to our product pages to try and optimise them for search purposes and to try and improve the customer buying experience. This is where my head starts to hurt! Now, let's say I am selling a T shirt that comes in 4 sizes and 6 different colours. At the moment my website would have 24 products, each with pretty much the same content (maybe differing references to the colour & size). My idea is to change this and have 1 main product page for the T-shirt, but to have 24 product SKU's/variations that exist to give the exact product details. Some different ways I have been considering to do this: a) have drop-down fields on the product page that ask the customer to select their Tshirt size and colour. The image & price then changes on the page. b) All product 24 product SKUs sre listed under the main product with the 'Add to Cart' open next to each one. Each one would be clickable so a page it its own right. Would I need to set up a canonical links for each SKU that point to the top level product page? I'm obviously looking to minimise duplicate content but Im not exactly sure on how to set this up - its a big decision so I need to be 100% clear before signing off on anything. . Any other tips on how to do this or examples of good e-commerce websites that use product SKus well? Kind regards Tom
Technical SEO | | DHS_SH0 -
Business name not showing on Google Maps Satellite View
Hi Everyone, When you go into Google Maps and look at the satellite view, you'll notice business names on some, but not all, businesses--like on the roof of the building. Where do I need to go to get this to work for my business? My Google Places pages are setup properly but as far as I can tell there is no setting for this. Is it the Service Area setting? Currently I have it set to "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations." Perhaps I need to set this to "No." Many thanks, Robert
Technical SEO | | AC_Pro1 -
Google counting numbers of products on category pages - what about pagination ?
Hi there, Whilst checking out the SERPS, as you do, I noticed that where our category page appears, google now seems to be counting the number of products (what it calls items) on the product page and displaying this in the 1st part of the description (see image attached). My problem is we employ pagination, so that our category page will have 15 items on it, then there are paginated results for the rest, with either ?page=2 or page-2/ etc. appended to the URL. Although this is only a minor issue, I was just wondering if there was a way to change the number of products displayed on that page to be the entire number of products in that category, is there a microformat markup or something that can over-ride what google has detected ? Furthermore is this system of pagination effective ? I have considered using javascript pagination, such that all products would be loaded on to the one page but hidden until 'paginated', but I was worried about having hidden elements on the page, and also the impact of load times. Although I think this may solve the problem and display the true number of products in a section! Any help much appreciated, Stuart b4urme.jpg
Technical SEO | | stukerr0