Resolution Layer Case Study · Read & Diagnose
Tire retail product pages.
A catalog read across the product pages of a multi-state tire retailer — where the fine print, a rating and a page address each fail to agree with the page they sit on.
This is a real EKOM catalog analysis, with the client's identity removed. The client is a multi-state tire retailer that publishes a product page for every size of every tire it lists. EKOM read those pages for a set of tire models, one at a time and a few seconds apart, and ran checks on every page against the data it publishes for search engines. Seven findings are reported.
This is a set of models chosen so the same tires could be compared across retailers, not a census. The counts below describe what was read and should not be scaled to the catalog, and nothing here has been confirmed with the retailer. Some of the values may originate upstream of it; a shopper reads them on the retailer's page either way.
What makes a tire page different is what rides on it. A shopper reads it to decide what fits, how fast it is rated to go, how long it lasts and how it can be paid for, and a search engine or assistant reads the same page's data as the tire's record.
On a tire page, the fine print is not decoration. A financing note that has not been finished is read by every shopper who reaches it.
Model names, sizes, part numbers and wording that could identify the retailer have been removed or generalized.
What's inside
- At a glance — the severity split, where the findings concentrate, and how the read was done.
- The financing note — a drafting instruction published where the terms should be.
- Pages that lead nowhere, and ratings that contradict — addresses in the sitemap that do not open a tire, and a speed rating that disagrees with its own service description.
- Missing values and what a machine reads — the word “null” published as data, repeated sizes, and a title that promises a price the data does not carry.
- Where the fixes group, and what's next — the kinds of fix the findings fall into, and the order to fix in.
Nothing was supplied and no internal system was touched. Everything below was read from the retailer's public product pages, the data each page publishes for search engines, and the sitemap and robots.txt it publishes, plus another retailer's public pages for one comparison.
Where the findings concentrate
Theme
What it is
Findings
Fine print
A financing note that is a drafting instruction, not terms
1
Page addresses
Sitemap addresses that open an error or a blank page; working pages with no title
1
Ratings
A speed rating that contradicts the service description on the same page
1
Missing values
“null” published as a value; one tire under two names; repeated sizes
2
Search-engine data
No price or barcode in the data, beside titles that promise a price
1
Context
The same tires against another retailer
1
How EKOM read this catalog
1
Read
Every size page of each model in the set, read as the retailer serves it, along with robots.txt and the published sitemaps.
Every size each model lists, not a handful of examples.
→
2
Check
Test each page against itself: the service description against the load index and speed rating, each field against “null” or blank, each address against what opens.
Where a page agrees with itself, that is reported too.
→
3
Compare
Set the same tires side by side with the same tires at another retailer.
Seven findings, six themes, three kinds of fix.
Machine-surfaced signals from a cold read of a set of pages, checked against each page's own data — not a verified defect list. Some will prove intentional, which is why each is tied to the values behind it.
Beside the price area of every tire page there is a line of fine print about financing. Where a shopper should read the terms of a financing offer, the page carries something else.
Critical · Financing disclosure
Every tire page that renders a product carries an unfinished financing note: a drafting instruction published where the terms should be.
The line after the pricing sentence is an instruction to whoever writes the copy, saying that terms are required, followed by formatting characters that did not render. The only trace of the retailer's card is a link. The wording is the same on every page that renders a product, which points to one template field rather than an error page by page.
Element
What the page carries
Status
Pricing line
Reads as copy a shopper can use
fine
Financing terms
A note that terms are still required
placeholder
Formatting
Raw formatting characters in the text
unrendered
Card link
Present
fine
That is the useful part: one field, corrected once, reaches every tire page. Where a financing offer is shown, the terms are what a shopper, and a compliance reviewer, expect to read beside it.
Pages that lead nowhere, and ratings that contradict.
A product sitemap tells a search engine which pages are worth visiting. A speed rating tells a driver how fast a tire is built to go. Both should agree with the page they point to.
High · Product pages
Fourteen product addresses in the sitemap open an error page or a blank page, and four working pages have no title.
Nine addresses render the retailer's own “page not found” page. Five more load a page that has a title but no heading and no product. Every one is listed in the retailer's own product sitemap and answers a search engine with a normal “OK”, so nothing tells the engine to drop it, and a shopper arriving from search lands on an error. The fix is at the list: carry only addresses that render a product, and let a missing page say so.
High · Speed rating
Twenty sizes state a speed rating that contradicts their own service description; one trailer-tire line overstates it by 19 mph on every size.
A tire's service description is its load index plus its speed rating, so the separate speed-rating field on the same page should repeat the letter. On twenty sizes it does not, across seven tires. On every size of one trailer-tire line the description gives a rating of 87 mph and the field says 106 mph, an overstatement a shopper could act on. One size's description carries an extra letter.
The two values should never disagree, because one contains the other. That makes this a one-rule fix: derive the field from the description, and have the manufacturer's data settle which is right on the sizes where they differ.
Missing values, repeated sizes and what a machine reads.
A search engine or assistant reads the data each page publishes as values. Three patterns in that data turn a missing or repeated fact into a wrong one.
Medium · Missing values
The word “null” is published as a value on 863 pages, including the traction grade on 510 pages that publish a real treadwear grade.
A tire that carries a treadwear grade carries all three parts of the grade, so a traction grade of “null” beside a real treadwear number is missing data, not an exempt tire. Only 58 pages publish a complete grade. The service description and load index, the two most basic tire specifications, read “null” on 74 pages. A shopping tool reads “null” as a value, not as “unknown”.
Medium · Names and part numbers
One tire appears under two model names, and 66 sizes appear more than once under different part numbers.
One tire is listed under two names with no identical size listed under both, so a shopper or search engine looking for it finds only a handful of its sizes. Separately, 66 sizes are listed two or more times with the same name and service description, 91 extra pages in all, one of them seven times. Some may be car-maker-specific versions, but nothing on the page tells a shopper which is which.
Medium · Search-engine data
No tire page publishes a price or a barcode in its product data, and the page titles promise a low price.
Asking for a store or vehicle before quoting an installed price is a sensible way to sell tires, and this is not treated as a gap. The observable consequence is narrower: the data holds no offer and no barcode on any page read, and the SKU field repeats the manufacturer part number, so a search engine has no price to show against a title that promises one.
Against another retailer, and what is strong.
Context · Not rated
Against a specialist online retailer, most shared sizes agree, and the rest split into omissions, “null” and a small number of outright disagreements.
Where the same tire and size appear at both retailers, the large majority agree on the service description. The remainder are mostly an omission, where one side drops the second load index that light-truck and trailer tires carry, or a “null” on one side. A small number disagree outright, concentrated in two tires. Which side is right is not established here, and one side may carry another generation of the same tire's specification.
And what is strong here
No page was refused or challenged. The size in the data of every working page matches its address, no tread depth is implausible, and no light-truck size carries a passenger load range, or the reverse. This is a catalog whose data mostly holds together, which is why its exceptions are easy to see. A rule written against data this consistent is practical rather than a line-by-line rewrite.
Seven findings sound like seven problems. They group into three kinds of fix — and a fix can be built once and run on every page, so the next one is caught as it lands.
One field, every page
What the data shows: the financing note is identical on every page that renders a product. The fix: correct the field once, and block any template from publishing while it carries a drafting phrase or an unrendered character.
Values a rule can test
What the data shows: a speed rating that is the trailing letter of the service description, a traction grade that always accompanies a treadwear grade, and a field that publishes “null” instead of staying empty. The fix: derive and test each against the field it must agree with, and raise exceptions for review rather than change them.
The list and the page out of step
What the data shows: addresses in the sitemap that open an error, and sizes listed under several part numbers or two names. The fix: hold the sitemap to pages that render a product, and label or collapse repeated sizes once the retailer confirms which are real variants.
Correcting the pages found corrects those pages. Checking every page against the field it should agree with corrects those and every page that arrives after them.
What this means, and what's next.
A product page is a record, not a page. When a shopper compares tires, when a search engine builds a result and when an assistant is asked how fast a tire is rated, the page is where a disagreement gets settled. Wherever a downstream system takes its data from that page, it takes the error with it.
The cost of this class of defect is the wrong expectation, not a lost sale. A shopper reads an unfinished instruction where financing terms belong. A shopper reads a speed rating above what a trailer tire is built for. A search engine sent to an address that opens an error passes the shopper on to it.
This pass read and diagnosed. The same structural understanding powers what follows — turning a diagnosed catalog into one every channel can read with confidence.
1 · Apply the checks the pages already make possible
Test every speed rating against its service description and raise any that disagree, stop publishing “null”, and hold the sitemap to pages that render. Each is a pattern-level check, not a page-by-page edit.
2 · Settle the questions that gate the rest — starting with the financing terms
Which financing terms belong on the page, which of two conflicting ratings the manufacturer stands behind, and which repeated sizes are real variants are answers that come from the retailer's data owners first.
3 · Hold the line at the source
Keep ongoing intelligence where the template and the manufacturer data meet the published page, so the next placeholder or broken address is caught as it lands rather than found by a shopper.
This is how EKOM moves a catalog from insight to impact —
and keeps every page reading right as the catalog grows.