Element DESCRIPTION#

Basic information#

The DESCRIPTION element contains a long product description. It should be a concise description and specification of the product. It must not contain advertising or promotions — for example, that the product has free shipping or is at a promotional price. These do not belong in DESCRIPTION.

There is no maximum length, but only the first 200 characters are shown in full-text search results.

• DESCRIPTION element specification on the Heureka website

Frequently asked questions#

• How do I remove HTML tags from DESCRIPTION?
  • Use the Strip HTML tags rule in Mergado. This rule can also repair text where HTML entities appear instead of characters with diacritics.
• How do I remove links from DESCRIPTION?
  • Using the Find and replace rule with regular expressions.
• How do I shorten text in DESCRIPTION?
  • Use the Truncate value rule to shorten the description to the required length.
• How do I wrap the value in DESCRIPTION in CDATA?
  • On the Elements page → use the >[c icon on the DESCRIPTION row. Heureka does not require the DESCRIPTION value to be wrapped in CDATA.
• How do I format the product description (headings, bullet points, bold text, etc.)?
  • Individually — on the Products page via manual editing of the DESCRIPTION element value, where a WYSIWYG editor is available.
  • In bulk — using artificial intelligence (AI) and the Mergado Sources extension, which can enhance product descriptions and add HTML formatting.
• How do I automatically generate product descriptions using AI?
  • Try the Mergado Sources extension.
• How do I translate the description in DESCRIPTION into another language?
  • For machine translation of the feed into other languages — covering not only DESCRIPTION but also categories, parameters, and product titles — use the Mergado Translate extension. It connects to Google Translate or DeepL and remembers already-translated texts, so you do not have to pay repeatedly for the same translations.
• How do I find products with a missing description in DESCRIPTION?
  • On the Products page, create a query where you enter the element DESCRIPTION in the search field and choose the is empty condition.
• How do I create a unique description in DESCRIPTION if it is duplicated across multiple products?
  • Using the Rewrite rule, you can add values from other elements — such as parameters, price, product title, manufacturer, or category — to the DESCRIPTION element. You can append these to the end of the existing description by entering a rewrite mask like this in the Rewrite rule:

%DESCRIPTION%

%PRODUCTNAME% is a quality product by %MANUFACTURER% priced at %PRICE_VAT%.

The exact mask depends on what values your elements contain — adjust it so the resulting text makes sense.

• How do I bulk-create a basic product description in DESCRIPTION when products do not have one?
  • The same way as described above — using the Rewrite rule, adding values from other elements, for example:

%PRODUCTNAME% is a quality product by %MANUFACTURER% priced at %PRICE_VAT%.
One of the top products in the category: %CATEGORYTEXT%.

Or as described above in the How do I automatically generate product descriptions using AI? section.

What Mergado Audit checks for the DESCRIPTION element#

• Whether the DESCRIPTION element is missing or empty for any products.
• Whether the values in DESCRIPTION are unique — multiple products should not share the same description.
• The audit also flags descriptions that are too short or contain character encoding errors.
• A special audit feature for DESCRIPTION checks whether the product description contains information indicating that the product is sold out or unavailable.

If you need help, contact our technical support.