Hidden text in comments for search purposes

[harlequin]

Hi all, I seem to remember a post on the forum describing how to embed search terms into product descriptions using html comments so it doesnt show on site.

For example:

I have customer who sells glockenspiels, he wants people to be able to search on frequent misspellings such as glockenspeel, glokenspiel, glockenspeal, etc WITHOUT having to put those terms somewhere in the product description.

I thought that you could put !!< <!-- glockenspeel, glokenspiel, glockenspeal -> >!! in the product description and actinic would find it, but not display the code inside comments. It doesnt!

Can anyone help, thanks in advance.

[harlequin]

found the solution

just found the solution myself http://community.actinic.com/showthr...n+misspellings

thanks.

[RuralWeb]

You may be better creating a page about g****s in which you could use all the misspellings in the text to explain the missspellings, that way you will have a far better chance of getting a good ranking

I think you would be better off doing this rather than trying to "trick" the SEs

[harlequin]

hi malcolm, this actually is to help the user/browser and is not really an seo tactic we use at all, just customer oriented....and of course, the glockenspiel example is just a way of explaining our predicament and the actual problem we have is slightly different meaning its not possible to create a page explaining spelling errors, thanks for replying though.

Best Regards,

Steve Quinn

[jont]

Be wary of using <noscript> or anything which hides the element from the viewer as only a matter of time before (if not already) search engines start to tag these as spamming.

If you are wanting to allow users to find your products and take account of common typos then may be worth adding to the bottom of each page in a fragment a small amount of text describing what it is "otherwise known as" - you could even code this to appear in a washed out colour so it is not that obvious.

[harlequin]

hi there jont, thanks for the input, for the small amount of products this needs to be used on (maybe 20 or 30 out of thousands) it shouldnt trip any search engine filters, we have been seo'ing now for 4 years and whereas i shouldnt say it WONT trip the filters, we are confident it wont.

To be honest, i would be more worried about putting things in almost invisible text, i.e. similar colour to background of page, as that IS something that will definately get you dropped from the engines if they feel you are doing it.

Possibly, to avoid tripping search engine filters, it would be wise to put a small bit of <script> code in front of it, to correspond to the <no script> as no script tags are only supposed to be used if there is a scripted equivalent.

These are just my thoughts on it, not facts i must add and i certainly welcome any discussion that will avoid rankings loss in the engines.

Thanks,

[jont]

To be honest, i would be more worried about putting things in almost invisible text, i.e. similar colour to background of page, as that IS something that will definately get you dropped from the engines if they feel you are doing it.

I meant to wash it down to eg grey text on white not white on white which as you say would certainly get you blocked.

[harlequin]

maybe......

maybe, we could ask actinic nicely to put in an 'common search terms' tab in the product details at some point in the future that somehow searches the cat files rather than anything thats sent to the browser.... :-)

this would be a more elegant solution im sure....and one thats not only pertinent to this site i am working on i would bet.

[harlequin]

also worth thinking about...

the solutions with doing a fragment, or separate page do not take the customer to the product from search,

the separate page, you would have to code not only the misspellings onto, but hardcode the links to the relevant products or ask the user to search again under different terms, the fragment method would take the customer to the right page ok, but then they would still have to scroll around looking for the right product and with up to 30 products on a page it can become tedious for the user quickly....

far quicker/neater and therefore likely to be more profitable not to say sensible, is to take the customer directly to the product from the search, as i say the idea of a common search terms tab that the actinic user inputs EITHER common misspellings or just simply alternativ names for an item which they dont really want to list on the page.

again, just some more thoughts on this..

[SusanF]

Hi Steve,

I agree that this is something that Actinic should consider. One solution would be to make the CUSTOMVARS properly searchable using Simple Search. Then, when a customer enters a keyword the search could include these words stored within the CUSTOMVAR as well as those found in the full description area. The concept of CardsAtYourFingertips is that customers find an image they like, then add an appropriate greeting. To assist in finding the image, I need a bank of words that might be used in the search. For example, a card featuring a dog, might turn up in a search using dog, terrier, puppy, animal, pets etc. These are not all words I would want included in the description of the actual card and so at present I can only use the <noscript> method. It is now worrying to find that this might be detrimental to search engine placings, as I have included this method for every product on the site!

Could we please have Actinic add something along these lines to the wish list.

[harlequin]

I meant to wash it down to eg grey text on white not white on white which as you say would certainly get you blocked.

hi jont, that actually was more for people reading the thread who might read 'washed out' for 'same colour is even better', sorry if i kinda misquoted you to get point across, the thing is as well with obfuscated / hidden / greyed text I suppose its got to be considered at what contrast point (theres a very scientific therefore checkable way to quantify difference in contrast) does google or other search engines consider hidden text ? For example its been long known and frowned upon to have white text on white backgrounds etc, but if i was a google engineer, i would also go a little further and use the scientific contrast index to decide if text was within a certain (very close) range of the background colour and therefore ban it on the basis its obviously not meant to be read by the visitors....

again, must say these are only thoughts not facts.....i do love a good discussion :-)

The best way for our customer and anyone else using the noscript method would be either a search terms tab, or using customvars which im playing with at the moment but cannot get to locate the product in the search.

[cdicken]

Could we please have Actinic add something along these lines to the wish list.

I've added this for you.