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Group: Forum Members
Last Active: Mon 21 May 2018
Posts: 94,
Visits: 266
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Here is another nightmare scenario caused by Google that could be addressed by adding a function to address the way product listings are transferred to the Kartris generated Google XML shopping feed. Bear with me on this, it takes some explaining...
The shop I run a site for is a drums & percussion retailer and I'll pick a specific product example they sell, in this case Paiste cymbals.
Paiste cymbals have a lot of sub-category ranges and I'll concentrate on just one for this purpose, the Paiste 2002 series. Here's how it looks in Kartris terms:
Cat parent: Cymbals
¬ Sub-category: Paiste Cymbals
¬¬ Sub-category: Paiste 2002 Cymbals
¬¬¬ Products: Paiste 2002 Hi-Hat Cymbals | Paiste 2002 Ride Cymbals | Paiste 2002 Crash Cymbals | Paiste 2002 China Cymbals | Paiste 2002 Splash Cymbals
All of the Products have lots of different sizes and models and therefore, are ideal for 'Options Product' listing.
Let's take just one product for the example, 'Paiste 2002 Crash Cymbals'.
As you will understand, 'Paiste 2002 Crash Cymbals' is the 'Name' field in the 'Product Info' section of the product listing page. It is this 'Name' field that gets pulled over to the Google attributes for the XML Google shopping feed file. In the XML file it comes out as:
<title>Paiste 2002 Crash Cymbals</title>
From an SEO point, this is perfect because if you use the Google keywords tool to help you find out what people search for when searching for Paiste 2002 Crash cymbals, the most popular typed in search query is 'paiste 2002 crash cymbal'....not rocket science really!
So, as a listing, this is semantically correct, it makes sense and is associated with the most popular search term when searching for a Paiste 2002 Crash cymbal. With me so far? Good....here's where it goes wrong with Google shopping....
The Kartris generated XML file goes to Google and the product title Google select to enter into their shopping feed results, is 'Paiste 2002 Crash Cymbals'. Yes, sounds fine, but here's what happens in reality.
Drummer goes online to search for who's selling the cheapest Paiste 2002 Crash cymbals, he types in the search query and the Google shopping results come up at the top of the page. The first listing in their shopping results offers 'Paiste 2002 Crash Cymbal 18"' and a choice of 5+ shops. The drummer clicks on the 5+ shops link to see the choices offered and guess what, my boss' shop doesn't appear! In fact, it doesn't appear in any of the other shopping choices in the shopping results.
It appears that Google don't like 'Paiste 2002 Crash Cymbals' as a title for their shopping feeds if you want to be in their results. You have to be more specific. I have studied this now with other products we're not getting PPC results for and it's the same deal. The Kartris 'Name' attribute in the product listing has to contain a phrase specific to Google's algorithms to turn up in a shopping search result.
So here's the workaround and it's a pretty non-semantic horrible kludge.
Instead of the product 'Name' attribute being 'Paiste 2002 Crash Cymbals', it has to be changed to 'Paiste 2002 18" Crash Cymbal (+other sizes)' in order to successfully make it into the shopping feed results.
This is ugly because the product is an options product and not just a single 18" Crash cymbal, hence my addition of the 'other options' phrase. So, my request is for future Kartris releases, can we please have the ability to re-write the product name so it appears as a title attribute that Google will actually list in their shopping feeds? that way we can leave product layout in a logical and semantic order that doesn't confuse the human eye.
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Group: Administrators
Last Active: Fri 15 Sep 2023
Posts: 806,
Visits: 2,737
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Did you try creating product with multiple versions (which you can name) instead? Looking at the code, we actually output the version name, not the product name. However, on options products there is just a base version, so it takes the name of the product.
I think using multiple versions would make more sense for a number of reasons:
- you can name each individual version
- you can price each one individually
- you can give each one a unique SKU
- you can list them in order of size so people can see the complete range
- you can put an individual description and image for each if required
The Google feed will pick up the version name, but the page itself that displays all these versions will use the product name.
For example here:
http://adcdrums.co.uk/Cymbals/zildjian-cymbals/zildjian-a-cymbals/zildjian-a-crash-cymbals__p-12-118-129-244.aspx
You have an options product to have to upload images of each item to the main product. But these don't tie in directly to the options listed.
I think it would be far more logical to set this as a multiple versions product, have a single product image as basic illustration, and then a list of versions, each one a different cymbal, with its own image, price, weight and name.
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Group: Forum Members
Last Active: Mon 21 May 2018
Posts: 94,
Visits: 266
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Well, originally I did look at multiple versions as that was what we used in the Cactushop site that didn't have options. However, the task of listing sometimes 30 individual versions for one product was a heck of a lot more time consuming than using pre-populated models in option groups and incrementing prices. Plus, many cymbal companies use the same named options (like 14" Medium or 16" Rock) right across the board, so it makes it quicker and easier to list products from different companies.
I've just looked at one of our multiple version products which is the Tama SLP snare drum. This is the title that gets exported to the shopping feed like on the options product base product so it looks like the same deal. Each multiple version gets listed with the same base product title. So, even if I did multiple versions for the 19 or so different models of Paiste 2002 Crash cymbals, they would all still have the same title for Google to scan and decide whther or not to include.
The version name of a multiple version product doesn't get picked up by Google either. One of these Tama Snare drums has a version name of 'Sonic Steel' that doesn't appear in the google feed at all, so the feed is not being populated with a version name from a multiple product listing.
I can see listing every single item as a single version would work, but that's just a ton of work and a cluttered up site.
I don't have a reason why Google are ignoring a logical title of a product search term - no body but NOBODY searches for drum products the way they are turning up in Google product feeds.
I figured that I'll have to do a landing page type of listing for each product category like here:
https://adcdrums.co.uk/Cymbals/paiste-cymbals/Paiste-Best-Sellers__c-p-0-0-12-56-201.aspx
I have picked the most popular model from each range and listed the title (as a single product) exactly how Google deliver their shopping feed. I'll see what happens anyway as it's an interesting experiment to see what Google are choosing to list.
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