Google Merchant Center recently introduced a new attribute called the short title. Learn how this differs from the title attribute and when should you use it. The blog will cover the following topics:
What Are Short Titles And Where Do They Appear?
Short titles are a new attribute that Google has added to Google Merchant Center. This will allow advertisers to optimise their product titles even further. The new short title attribute should be concise as it’s intended to show in “browsy experiences” such as Discovery Ads or Shopping ads on Gmail.
The short title attribute is optional unlike the ‘title’ attribute. The main difference between the two attributes is as follows:
- Title attribute: Is more accurate at matching the product landing page and a consumer’s search.
- Short title attribute: Is a brief concise recognition of your product.
As the short title attribute is optional, it may not be shown on all networks, but it will appear in places where users do a lot of browsing, for example Shopping Ads in Gmail or Discovery Ads.
According to Google, products titles often get lost within the ‘browsy’ contexts. This means that users are not able to see all of the relevant information from your ad. Short titles help provide merchants with another, condensed way to pinpoint their products, which could also improve clickthrough rates.
Short Titles Requirements
At the moment, the character limit for the short title attribute is 1-150 characters, however, Google recommends keeping the character count between 5-65 characters.
Google warns that if you do not follow the minimum requirements, they might disapprove your product. Here are some of the main requirements:
- Avoid using foreign languages, unless they’re well understood.
- Avoid using capital letter for emphasis. Capitalisation should still be used where appropriate for example for abbreviations, countries and currency.
- Use relevant short title that clearly describes your product.
- Always use professional and grammatically correct language.
- Be sure to describe the product from your landing page.
- Avoid using unprofessional ways of drawing attention such as using all caps, symbols, extra white spaces, etc.
- Don’t use promotional text such as the prices, sale price, sale dates, shipping, delivery date and any other time related information.
Short Titles Best Practices
There are several ways to optimise short titles in your product feed, the main recommendations include:
- Stay under 65 characters – as users often only see the first 65 characters (depending on their screen size).
- Ensure you list the most important details first – this is because users don’t always read the whole title.
- Add the brand name if this helps differentiate the product. This may become important if you sell similar products across brands.
Summary
Within more content heavy networks such as Discovery tab or Gmail, less is always more when it comes to displaying your ads.
By providing a more concise title, you have the opportunity to grasp user’s attention quicker.
It could be beneficial to test out using a short title in your product feed and comparing the traffic from those metrics, however, be sure to follow the minimum requirements and best practices given by Google so your ads don’t get disapproved.
