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tealt wrote: @tealtI don't want to surround any of my regular description with the div and span html tags.
I want to create a completely separate text for my 800 Character Custom View that is different from the "regular", full description. I want that Custom View to be invisible to PC users. Can I do that. How?
@Anonymous
To answer the question by tealt, asking for two description blocks, if we use eBay's tags, and mark summary content as display:none to hide it in the full description, will the text still be extracted and displayed in the summary?
<div vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="Product" style="display:none"><span property="description">
...summary description here...
</span></div>
<p>Regular description here</p>
More clarification please.
If I tag a summary block in my full description, I know that only the tagged summary will appear in the mobile preview and the full description will appear on click-through.
However, I also assume the tagged excerpt will still display in the full description. In my mind, I would just highlight the section to pass through in addition to displaying it in the full description.
Many would like to have two descriptions, the summary and a different full description. There is some confusion over whether the tagged portion will remain visible in the full description or whether the tagging will hide it there. If tagging does not hide it, can we add css attributes to eBay's tags to do so, or will that interfere with the extraction?
What happens if the tagged content exceeds 800 character?
@brucel64 wrote:What happens if the tagged content exceeds 800 character?
That is a very interesting question.
As a programmer, I would guess the content would truncate at 800, but I would hope that eBay would truncate between words and not in the middle of a word and that they would use an ellipses (...) at the truncation point.
That's why I ask. They only go to 800 characters if the description is less than 800 otherwise they only pull 250 (my understanding so far).
Will eBay just truncate at 800 or will they try to extract 250 characters the same as if there were no tags?
If they extract 250....is it the first 250 or do they use some other method?
@brucel64 wrote:
They only go to 800 characters if the description is less than 800 otherwise they only pull 250 (my understanding so far).Will eBay just truncate at 800 or will they try to extract 250 characters the same as if there were no tags?
If they extract 250....is it the first 250 or do they use some other method?
If there are no tags, and the code exceeds 800 characters, or includes complex HTML, eBay will extract a 250 block of whatever text they want, and my experience is that they extract nonsense with no rhyme or reason. I posted a screenshot I captured today where I had a full item description, and eBay captured sample "ipsum lorem" greeking text from my terms tabs. How silly is that? It wouldn't match any keywords. It probably matches some repetition algorithm (same sample text over and over again). I have performed extensive testing in the past to try to get real content into the summary, to no avail (which I reported to the Mobile App programmers in a face-to-face meeting last Sept). The only method that worked was to produce only short, plain text, and then that text finally appeared in the summary.
So, let us assume you will use the new tags, and then let's look at it logically.
eBay says you can mark up to 800 characters. eBay has to find the markers first, and if they use some sort of element parsing like XML or HTML, they will find whatever content is between your markers. So if your markers include 1200 characters, eBay should retrieve 1200 characters. But, once they get your content, they should truncate it down to their 800 character limit. There would be no reason to "look for" a 250 block in that 1200 block since you have already performed the "look for" task with your markers. I would expect truncation so that the first 800 characters (up to some word break) would appear.
Of course, eBay could come up with some other scheme, so what seems most programmatically logical may not prevail. 
Yeah, I plan to use the tags because it provides me some control over what's seen as opposed to being stuck with whatever eBay comes up with that may or may not be relevent.
If they truncacate it's a non issue but if not then whatever controll was attempted is lost. IT's a matter of how much time is invested in counting characters. It's not difficult but even copy/paste is an extra step and with OOAK items every additional step adds up quickly.
@prefontained wrote:What I'm leaning towards is writing something generic like "If you are on a mobile app, please click the below link to view the item description." and just copy/pasting that surrounded by the tagging html to each listing.
I would then suggest predefining a dropdown insert on the editor. Additionally, an insert could be the way to handle the tagging by creating in insert with the mobile tags and a placeholder word (assuming inserts will be available on the new seller hub listing editor). An insert would not adhere to the character limit, since it allows up to 4000 characters.
Of course, your suggestion of generic text assumes the tagged text will appear only as a mobile summary and not as part of the larger description. This needs clarification from eBay.
