title attributes in links

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title attributes in links

when is a lot too much?

designaweb

11:29 am on Sep 20, 2006 (gmt 0)

For one of my directories I have a sitemap that lists als the cities where I sell widgets. I do not have the anchor text set to "widgets city 1", "widgets city 2", etc., I simply list the city names, otherwise I think it would be a little spammy.

However, I was recently reviewing parts of my site, and noticed that I haven't added any "title" attributes to this list of city links.

My question is, would you add "city" as the title attribute, or "widget city" or "Find widgets in city"? I mean, "widget city" would make sense, but because of the long list of cities, perhaps I would overoptimise repeating "widget" again and again?

jimbeetle

1:41 pm on Sep 20, 2006 (gmt 0)

I think something along the lines of "Find widgets in whatever city" is perfectly fine as it does exactly what the title attribute [w3.org] is supposed to do: add information about the nature of a link.

designaweb

3:26 pm on Sep 20, 2006 (gmt 0)

I agree totally, it would make the most sense... However, having:

"Find widgets in city 1"
"Find widgets in city 2"
"Find widgets in city 3"
"Find widgets in city 4"
"Find widgets in city 5"
"Find widgets in city 6"

etc...

Would make the site slightly spammy, no?

jimbeetle

4:06 pm on Sep 20, 2006 (gmt 0)

Guess that depends on how much weight you think the SEs give to the attribute.

You can always go with a menu that looks like:

Find widgets in...
City 1
City 2
City 3

That kind of makes the title attribute redundant.

rthakare

6:58 pm on Sep 20, 2006 (gmt 0)

or maybe just change the title attribute to read like a different statemtnt with the meaning remaining the same

widgets in city1
city2 widgets
widgets city3

designaweb

9:41 am on Sep 22, 2006 (gmt 0)

Guess that depends on how much weight you think the SEs give to the attribute.

Yes, that's right... And also something I'm not really sure of...

You can always go with a menu that looks like:
Find widgets in...
City 1
City 2
City 3
That kind of makes the title attribute redundant.

Yep, that's my other option. But that was my question: What would *you* do... :)

[edited by: ciml at 9:57 am (utc) on Sep. 22, 2006]
[edit reason] Fixed formatting. [/edit]

jimbeetle

1:50 pm on Sep 22, 2006 (gmt 0)

I'd go with my last option. It reads the same for visual browsers and screen readers, it isn't awkwardly worded or repetitive, doesn't sound spammy, works for you and the visitor. Yeah, why not? Doesn't appear to have any drawbacks.

tedster

12:23 am on Sep 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

Guess that depends on how much weight you think the SEs give to the attribute.

I haven't tested recently, but in 2005 the answer from a Google search engineer at PubCon New Orleans was absolutely none. He said that title attributes were too rare on the web at large for them to bother with.

That was also my experience -- strong pages with unique text in the title attribute (and that is extremely rare, given how a title attribute is used) would not show up on a search for that unique text. I would love to hear that the situation has changed, but I will keep coding title attributes for visitors, even so.

jimbeetle

4:34 pm on Sep 23, 2006 (gmt 0)

Yeah, the absolutely no weight would be what I think it should be. Quite often, a perfectly valid use of the attribute, as in designaweb's example...

"Find widgets in city 1"
"Find widgets in city 2"
"Find widgets in city 3"
"Find widgets in city 4"
"Find widgets in city 5"
"Find widgets in city 6"

...would (And probably should?) look quite spammy. I think we oftentimes get a bit too caught up in these nitty-gritty arcane points and forget to look at the whole picture. Kind of a forest and the trees type of thing.