title

Title carries more SEO weight than any other feed field, and the difference between a well-formed title and a vague one shows up directly in CPCs and CTR. Channels weight title heavily for relevance scoring, which means the same product with a worse title pays more for less traffic. Most catalogs leave significant lift on the table by treating title as a name-of-the-product field rather than a positioning field.

The structure that works for most retail: `[Brand] [Product Type] [Key Attribute] [Variant] [Size]`. Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones — Black. Nike Air Max 270 Mens Running Shoes Size 10 Black/White. The brand-first ordering wins branded search (people who already know the brand convert at higher rates); the structured attributes catch refinement searches; the visible truncation point at ~65 characters captures the most important info before the cut. For non-branded products (own-brand, generic categories), lead with the product type rather than brand: "Cotton Bedsheet Set Queen Size Navy Blue" beats "Acme Bedsheet Set Queen Size Navy Blue Cotton" because non-branded shoppers don't filter by brand first.

Length sweet spot varies by channel. Google Shopping accepts up to 150 characters but shows ~70 in most placements. Meta shows ~65 in feed cards but accepts 200. TikTok caps hard at 60. Pinterest accepts longer titles but truncates at ~100. The pragmatic answer is 60-65 character titles that fit everywhere visibly, with the most important attribute in the first 30 characters. Anything past 65 either truncates or gets ignored by the user in scan-heavy placements.

The promotional-language trap is where the most CTR is lost. "SALE", "FREE SHIPPING", "BEST PRICE", "AMAZING DEAL", "★ NEW ★", "🔥" — every channel's editorial classifier flags these, suppressing the listing's ranking and sometimes blocking it outright. The promotional information belongs in dedicated fields (sale_price, promotion_id) or in ad-level extensions. Keep the title clean and let the structured fields handle the promo signalling. A clean title with sale_price set displays as "£29.99 ~~£49.99~~ Sony Wireless Headphones" in placements — the price machinery handles the savings signal, the title handles the product identity.

Keyword stuffing fails for the same reason. "Wireless Headphones Bluetooth Headphones Noise Cancelling Over-Ear Headphones for Travel and Gym" reads as keyword-padded; channels' classifiers penalise it. Better: "Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless Over-Ear Noise Cancelling Headphones — Black". The first form mentions "headphones" four times; the second mentions it once but with rich attribute information. The latter ranks better across the board.

For variant groups, each variant's title should include its variant attribute (size, colour) so users searching for that specific variant land on the right item. "Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless Headphones — Black" and "Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless Headphones — Silver" both share the item_group_id but differ on the variant suffix. Without variant-specific titles, the algorithm can't tell which variant won a click, which kills variant-level reporting and breaks size-specific retargeting.

The Optimiser approach to title at scale: extract product attributes from existing data (description, images via OCR, supplier feeds), apply the brand-first structured format, validate character count per channel, and write per-variant titles automatically. For catalogs over a few thousand items, this is the only scalable approach because manual title writing at quality requires roughly 10 minutes per item.