Removal of character counter quantifiers "too short, good, too long"

[SchneiderSam]

Describe the bug I have just tested master in my test environment and the description gives me this hint:

On one side I get the hint that the description is good (green). But the bar is orange. That contradicts itself nevertheless... ?!

Expected behavior Both should be green or yellow?

[sybrew]

Thank you for testing the development version, and of course for opening this bug report! I'm deeming it as a 'question' because it's a conflict of "imposed knowledge" rather than a bug.

The character counter is a guideline, and the pixel counter is an assertion. For an explanation, please see https://tsf.fyi/kb/what-are-pixel-counters/.

I'm calling it "imposed knowledge" because of SEOs around the world bid to the character counter as if it's a holy grail. It is why we still honor it, even though it's not absolutely correct.

In fact, I'd rather do away with the character counter, but we still rely on it for the SEO Bar (see #204). So, for the next major release, I added corrections to the counters for various languages. These changes should make the character and pixel counters more in line with each other.

I also added a disclaimer to the SEO Bar, as seen in the image below at the 3rd assessment.

One tweak you may be interested in is for German, where I dropped the character guideline thresholds respectively to Roman/Latin by 1.25% to account for the use of capitalization on nouns. With this, for German, the description generator should aim for 158 characters. If you believe that it isn't enough of a tweak, do let me know (example descriptions that maximize green at the pixel counters are very helpful)!

I'm going to highlight these and write about all other changes soon. Stay tuned!

[SchneiderSam]

Thank you for your answer and your explanation.

As described in my first post, my point is rather that there is a contradiction from my point of view. So there is a number of characters used and a pixel width. But it should be the same result. Or be coordinated with each other. As an end user I think to myself:

"Ah yes: everything in the green area... hm but why is that yellow now. What am I doing wrong?

If the number of letters is not decisive (as described in your example) then I wouldn't mark it as "green" or "good". The decisive factor is the pixel width. Or?

What I want to say: for me as an end user (and I know a lot about SEO) this ad is a bit confusing. I wouldn't color the character counter or rate it "good" or "bad".

[sybrew]

Thank you for your excellent insights! Unfortunately, there are counter-arguments to resolve.

My first counter-argument would be that these numbers are intertwined with the SEO Bar--see #204 why we still rely on them.

Another counter-argument would be that not all search engines rely on the pixel counter. Moreover, we found that Google doesn't apply the pixel counter to every region, like when performing queries in the Farsi language. I had to tweak the pixel counter in respect to that.

A workaround would be to click on the character counter and see what happens 😃. The colors may still bug you; but, they remain closely (not perfectly, see #443) representative of what the SEO Bar will convey.

With that, I await feedback to help resolve these conflicting arguments. The ultimate solution would be implementing #204, but we're not there yet.

[SchneiderSam]

Okay, I can't get that deep. That's why I don't have a solution either. Sorry. :-)

I just wanted to tell you how it would affect an end user. It is just contradictory (or irritating) for the first moment.

Your arguments are certainly comprehensible and logical. But for a copywriter only wants to know:

Have I done my job well or not? And what do I have to do to do a better job?

The whole thing is just for inspiration. These are (only) small details

Idea: For example, it would be interesting to learn how other SEO tools like Systrix, Xovi and Co solve this?

SEO Power Suits said to me: This information is probably not quite correct, after I learned so much from you. ;-) But it gives you a better feeling :-)

[sybrew]

I understand that it currently sends mixed and confusing messages. I do not know how I can better convey a more appropriate message where there's no need for an introduction. UI/UX is fickle. The worst that can happen is that a user makes both the character and pixel counters green, which is perfectly OK and makes the input compatible with all search engines, especially with the release of the correction I've made.

I don't want to build an emotionally-driven SEO tool. Moreover, data-driven-SEO can't be done because search engines are too convoluted, erratic, and fluctuating in handing results. "Bad SEO" is only there when dealing with extremes. The time everyone's wasting on optimizing every single detail could be spent on gathering an audience via social media or fixing a typo in your content.

I think a relaxing walk in the park also gives that "good feeling" everyone sought to achieve via the raters Yoast SEO, Rank Math, and SEOPress(or) biasedly bring based on anecdotal evidence.

Once a server-sided pixel counter is implemented, we can drop the character counter; considering that we need to actively reverse the data for languages that don't support pixels. I could forward the JS-driven pixels to the server on-save, but that brings too much overhead as we need to deal with multiple data-points.

For now, because of the contradicting evidence (SEO Bar, there's more than Google, the pixel counter is optional, Arabic/Farsi language support, etc.), I'm afraid there's little more I can do to synchronize the counters other than estimating averages. The colors and raters need to stay for whereafter the SEO Bar can exclaim what it found.

I believe that now you know how this all works and what our obstacles are, you can rest assured and move forward from there until we find a proper solution 😄. If however, the counter-quantifiers still bother you, then I suggest clicking on them to select your preferred counter.

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[SchneiderSam]

I believe that now you know how this all works and what our obstacles are, you can rest assured and move forward from there until we find a proper solution 😄.

Yes absolutly 😄

Great how you're doing your job. Please keep up the good work...

You have turned a customer into a fan ;-)

For me: issue can be close.

[sybrew]

😄

I'd like to keep this issue open, so I can easily find it when someone asks for this again. Other users are free to contribute their thoughts here, too, of course.

Furthermore, I still see this issue as something we can (and should) work on. Cheers!