How to name a product color for Google?

[ffctas]

What is the best way to handle naming of colors for products. People have a different understanding of what a color means. For example something that is generically "red" may be referred to as dark pink, fuchsia, cranberry, wine, cherry, etc. So, how does google understand a product is generically red even though it was named cherry. Or, if a widget comes in many shades of red, how do you name them.

Currently, it seems as if Google does not understand these similarities when doing a search. Is there a way to let the search engines understand these relationships, or is there any other kind of solution?

Thanks

[Robert Charlton]

This is not exactly addressing your question... but I'm wondering whether you are thinking of having separate pages to distinguish these product colors in the serps and whether you expect these product names to rank for the various color attributes.

I ask because I've observed that for most product attributes like color or size, Google does not want to return fine distinctions in the serps.

That said, if a major distribution channel (eg, Amazon) picks and chooses the best sellers (say black, white, red), on certain product types they may rank. (Eg, possibly specific model camera bodies, to pick something out of the air... I don't know whether this is specifically the case.)

A dealer or manufacturer that sells all colors, though, might have Panda problems returning separate pages for each color. Usually, you use form option values to specify color choices... and these normally don't get indexed. I've been seeing some efforts at workarounds... but I say all this because I don't think that Google tries to rank a page for these separate colors, let alone find "synonyms" for them... as they'd be dealing with many essentially duplicate pages even if you could set up the choices to be indexed under separate urls.

I welcome disagreement here, btw... as I'm still searching for a solution to this myself.

PS: There are ways of trying to show the colors online, but there are a lot of variables about how they'll get displayed... and naming these for Google is unlikely to enter into it.

[TheMadScientist]

Is there a way to let the search engines understand these relationships, or is there any other kind of solution?

It's not widely used, but: [schema.org...] > color might help, and even if it's not "coded in" to Google's or Bing's algo now, it may well be at sometime in the future, so I'd probably go ahead and use it on the theory: It might not help. It won't hurt. If it doesn't help now, because they haven't coded for it yet, it'll be there if/when they do.

[ffctas]

Is there some way, in the background, possibly with meta keywords, to let google know of color synonyms?

[Leosghost]

Why not use the HTML colour / color codes in your product descriptions..

eg..
Women's mini-skirt cowhide leather "white" ( #FFFFFF ) item#0001
Women's mini-skirt cowhide leather "black" ( #000000 ) item#0002
Women's mini-skirt cowhide leather "red" ( #FF0000 ) item#0003
Women's mini-skirt cowhide leather "red wine" ( #990012 ) item#0004

etc...
Synonyms ? ..Can give you problems..Fuschia..can mean red ..or purple..
Turquoise..some people say it is a blue, some say it is a green..
HTML colour / color codes remove the ambiguity..and ..Search engines know what HTML codes are :)

Remember not all colours are "web safe"..but this is only like to affect older browsers..

[Robert Charlton]

Remember not all colours are "web safe"..but this is only like to affect older browsers..

I haven't thought about web safe in a lo-o-ong lo-o-ong time.

Why not use the HTML colour / color codes in your product descriptions..

Keep in mind, regarding Google, that the range of synonyms it returns, though getting wider, is limited by usage, affected both by the number of queries and by what's in the index.

Several years back, eg, we had a discussion about how a zip code in a query might not bring up the placename, as zip codes (in the US) weren't frequently used in geo searches nor in most geo listings.

Similarly, I think it's extremely unlikely that HTML color codes in text would be helpful, unless there are frequent uses of HTML colour/color codes in visible text on product pages, as well as frequent queries for the codes in the product area.

I'd been thinking of Pantone color codes [en.wikipedia.org...] as the most exact way of specifying a color... but IMO, for most products, they probably wouldn't get any queries or mean anything to most users. In a niche that targets, say, designers or printers, where precise color specifications are important, Pantone codes might be helpful.

Again though, unless Pantone is commonly used in the niche, it's not likely to mean much either to users or to Google.

It would be interesting to see how Google reacted to schema with Pantone name/number combinations over time. Probably the schema format of the name/number combination would have to be more precisely defined.

[netmeg]

I have clients with products that come in up to 30 different colors or color combinations (for which we use a configurable product on a single page, with either dropdowns or radio buttons), and so far anyway, it looks like both Google and Bing do a pretty good job realizing that scarlet, crimson, and cherry are all varieties of red. If your colors are really obscurely named, then maybe flesh them out into two or three words (champagne gold, etc)

[tangor]

Rainbow (primed light spectrum) are the common colors ... and all other color variations come from those. The other is the Color Wheel, as those also make sense to the average person.

"Fancy" colors like red, vermillion, crimson, brick are all reds and nothing can change that.

UNLSS there is a true Brand Reason "Bubba's Crispy Crimson Widgets", I can't see much value in attempting to insert the "fancy" and expect Google, Bing or anyone else give it weight. There are just too many variations. In my example above, the parts that would have value are "Bubba's, Crispy" and "Widgets", as in most cases the color is not as important. YMMV

When selling widgets, sell the widget first on it's own product page, then offer (via form, etc) options TO THAT WIDGET. Google understands that, so you your users, and you have a primary page that can gain the juice for any "shade of color" during a search.