SEO

Options for retailers to control how their crawled product information appears on Google

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Published on 08/21/2020 – Last Updated on 08/21/2020 by OTC

Earlier this year Google launched a new way for shoppers to

“max-snippet:[number]” robots meta tag

This meta tag allows you to specify a maximum snippet length, in characters, of a snippet for your page to be displayed on Google results. If the structured data (e.g. product name, description, price, availability) is greater than the maximum snippet length, the page will be removed from any free listing experience.

“max-image-preview:[setting]” robots meta tag

This meta tag allows you to specify a maximum size of image preview to be shown for images on this page, using either “none”, “standard”, or “large”.

“data-nosnippet” HTML attribute

This attribute allows you to specify a section on your webpage that should not be included in a snippet preview on Google. When applied to relevant attributes for offers (price, availability, ratings, image) removes the textual, image and rich snippet for this page on Google and removes the listing from any free listing experiences.

Additional notes on these preferences:

  • The above preferences do not apply to information supplied via schema.org markup on the page itself. The schema.org markup needs to be removed first, before these opt-out mechanisms can become active. 

  • The opt-out preferences do not apply to product data submitted through Google Merchant Center, which offers specific mechanisms to opt-out products from appearing on surfaces across Google.

Use of mechanisms like nosnippet and data-nosnippet only affect the display of data and eligibility for certain experiences. Display restrictions don’t affect the ranking of these pages in Search. The exclusion of some parts of product data from display may prevent the product from being shown in rich results and other product results on Google.

We hope these options make it easier for you to maximize the value you get from Search and achieve your business goals. These options are available to retailers worldwide and will operate the same for results we display globally. For more information, check out our developer documentation on meta tags. 

Should you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us, or drop by our webmaster help forums.

Posted by Bernhard Schindlholzer, Product Manager