A properly formatted Product Title should be considered the cornerstone in your comparison shopping engine optimization (CSEO) efforts. To achieve optimal relevancy on most shopping engines, you may need to revise the Title in your feed from its original appearance on your site. On the other hand, Google prefers that the Title in your feed reflects the one found on your product's landing page. A bit of art and science is needed when crafting a Product Title because the balance of form and function changes from one engine to the next.
In general, the Title you craft should be clear, descriptive and accurate. A good Title should start with Brand, followed by a descriptive phrase or adjective about the product, and end with the product type (noun). Great information to include in your Title is gender, size, color and other descriptive attributes. You should avoid unnecessary use of punctuation, capitalization and symbols as way to make your products stand out. Crafting a Title that misrepresents your product is a sure fire way to lose the trust of those you are trying to sell to. No one likes being tricked.
The Title is a major factor in how your products match to search queries and is used by most engines to tie your products to additional sub categories. Your Title should not focus on clever marketing terms or fluff text but rather relevant product information a user may search for (such as brand, gender, model number, etc.). Keep in mind that you will not be able to craft a perfect Product Title that catches every nuance of every related search and categorization opportunity. For example, "Fender American Deluxe Stratocaster Electric Guitar (Black Maple)" is relevant for the person searching for "Fender Deluxe Stratocaster ", but not as much if they are searching for "Montego Black Fender Strat". Remember, if you can’t fit it all in the Title you can use the product description to include additional descriptive information.
Be aware of the total allowed character limit each Shopping Engine has for Product Titles and take advantage of it to ensure you have the most optimal Title in play. Do not exceed the allowed limit for a Title or it will be truncated. A truncated Title is an easy way to lose credibility because a potential customer may view this as a mistake and look somewhere else to purchase even if you offer the best price.
Here’s a quick reference to how many characters are allowed in the Product Title by Shopping Engine:
| Engine |
Field Length |
| Become |
80 Max Characters |
| Google Product Search |
80 Max Characters |
| Microsoft cashback |
255 Max Characters |
| MSN Shopping |
50 Max Characters |
| NexTag |
80 Max Characters |
| PriceGrabber |
255 Max Characters |
| Pronto |
255 Max Characters |
| Shopping.com |
100 Max Characters |
| Shopzilla |
100 Max Characters |
| Smarter.com |
No Limit, Truncate 70 characters in Search Results |
| Yahoo! Shopping |
No Limit, Truncate 45 characters in Search Results |
In general, the preferred Product Title structure is:
Brand >> Model >> Descriptive Copy >> Product Type
Even though this structure will work for most products, consider each product type has a unique list of attributes that could be used to make the Title more relevant.
Here are a few examples of different Product Title structures:
| Product Type |
Title Format |
Example Title |
| Clothing |
Brand >> Style / Color / Material >> Gender >> Clothing Type |
Eddie Bauer Blue XL Tall Long Sleeve Men's Straight-Collar Oxford Shirt |
| Electronics |
Brand >> Model Number >> Style / Color >> Product Type |
Apple iPOD Touch (MA627LL / A) Black 16GB Wi-Fi Digital Video / MP3 Player |
| Furniture |
Brand >> Series >> Style / Color / Material >> Furniture Type |
South Shore Lexington Collection Dark Mocha Queen Size Platform Bed |
| Movie |
Title >> Year >> Author / Artist / Director >> Format Type |
Swingers (2002 Miramax Collector's Series) ~ Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, and Ron Livingston (DVD) |
| Musical Instrument |
Brand >> Style / Color / Material >> Series >> Instrument Type |
Fender American Deluxe (HSS) Black Stratocater Electric Guitar |
| Wine |
Winery >> Year >> Region >> Wine Type |
Etude 2006 Carneros Estate Grown Pinot Noir Wine |
Helpful hints for Product Titles:
- Use standard spelling and grammar.
- Use common terms. (Use “sofa” not “davenport”)
- Do not include HTML or control characters.
- Don't use ALL CAPS and unnecessary punctuation. (!, ?, etc)
- Don’t use promotional text (Clearance, On Sale! & Free Shipping).
- Avoid using specific price, availability & time information.
There is no “one size fits all” formula to crafting a Product Title. The information above summarizes general best practices that will help you get 80% - 90% of the way there. Careful consideration needs to be given to the type of products you have, the channels you’re advertising on and how your target audience searches for these items. You can never go wrong with testing ideas on a subset of products, measuring the results and testing again. Of course, using tools like Hitwise, WordTracker and Google Insights for keyword research can go a long way for things like “shoe” vs. ‘footwear” or “drum set” vs. “drum kit” and so on.
