An SEO professional asked John Mueller about using abbreviations such as “eg” in their shortcuts on their website.
So their situation is: they have a few shortcuts on their site. These are German shortcuts such as IDR, UA, and ZBSP.
Are these shortcuts readable for Google? Or should they always avoid using such shortcuts on their website?
John explained that from a practical point of view, if this is something that you’re trying to rank for, then you should make it as clear as possible what you’re trying to rank for.
But these are really just shortcuts that you would use in writing on a normal page. And the content that you want to rank for is essentially not these shortcuts, but what’s around the shortcuts.
From that point of view, John would not worry about this. If this is normal language use, then it is something that users expect. They can read it, and they can understand it. And this is perfectly fine from Google’s perspective.
This happens at approximately the 32:10 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
John (Submitted Question) 32:10
We have some shortcuts on our website. So these are some German shortcuts like IDR, or UA or ZBSP. It’s so awkward to read these German shortcuts in English. Is this readable for Google? Or should we avoid shortcuts on our website?
John (Answer) 32:33
So from a practical point of view, if this is something that you’re trying to rank for, then I would make it as clear as possible what you’re trying to rank for. But these are essentially just shortcuts that you would use in writing on a normal page. And the content that you want to rank for is essentially not the shortcuts, but kind of like what’s around the shortcuts. And from that point of view, I would not worry about this. If this is normal language usage, then it is what it is, it is what users expect, they can read it, they can understand it. And that’s that’s essentially fine, from our point of view.
