Shopping feed description character length

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Shopping feed description character length

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According to the Bing Shopping Integration Guide Jan 2012, we have 5,000 characters for the product description.  However, I noticed that when I search through the Bing Shopping Search for a range or products, no product's description exceeds 519 characters and if it is, it is cut off.  Why the discrepancy?  Is it really just 500 characters long?

Thanks for your help,



All Replies
  • Hello Janell,

    Up to 5,000 characters are allowed for Descriptions, that is correct. I am able to see descriptions that are longer than 500 characters, such as this product: It has 655 characters, or 780 with spaces.

    I believe that most merchants have 500 or less because otherwise the block of text that makes up the description can start to look too long and imposing. We do not allow any HTML encoding/characters, so there are no paragraph breaks or other ways to break up text. As a result, when >500-600 characters are used, the text can start to look quite large/long.

    Does this answer your question?

    Thank you,
    Bing Shopping Onboarding Team