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  • #1

    Newbie! Meta Description question...

    Hi, all!

    I am new to Zoom Search. I have installed and tested just a bit and have a question on the Description information.

    I am trying to index a web site created with Lectora, which actually is an eLearning authoring tool. The HTML pages are generated automatically and they do not include meta tags for description or keywords.

    When there is no meta Description, how is Zoom pulling data? It looks to me like it simply lists the text that follows the <body> tag. Is that correct?

    It would take a fair amount of work to add the meta data to each page...is that my best option for being able to display a description that makes sense?

    Also, is it possible to change the title in Search Results without changing the <title> tag for the page?

    Thanks!

    WW
    Tags: meta description
  • #2
    When there is no meta Description, how is Zoom pulling data?
    Yes, it just uses the first few lines from the document / page.

    Yes, if you want a good meta description for each page, the only real way to do it is to create the description by hand for each page. Software just isn't smart enough (yet) to examine the document and come up with a good 1 line summary.

    You could always turn off the display of the description (from the Zoom configuration window on the results layout tab) if your site doesn't have the data available.

    Assuming you are talking about HTML pages, the best way to edit the document's title is to edit the <title> tag. If you turn off indexing of the title, then the file name will be used instead.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by wrensoft View Post
      Yes, it just uses the first few lines from the document / page.
      Just to add that we are talking specifically about Meta Descriptions here, and only for the JavaScript version. This is the text that appears in green by default.

      For the PHP, ASP and CGI versions, search results can also have Context Descriptions which extract a portion of the page content where the keyword(s) were found. Meta descriptions are only used if it is available. It will not use the first few lines of the document if context description is available.

      So to clarify:

      If you do not have context descriptions enabled (e.g. you are using the JS version), AND the page has no meta description, then Zoom is forced to use the first few lines of the page content for description (because there is nothing better available).

      If you have context descriptions enabled, and no meta description on the page, then Zoom will simply not show any meta description and use the context description by itself.

      Hope that helps.
      --Ray
      Wrensoft Web Software
      Sydney, Australia
      Zoom Search Engine

      Comment

      • #4
        Thanks! That answers my question!

        Thanks, that is what I needed to know -- I will add descriptions and keywords to the pages to make the search results more useful.

        Comment

        • #5
          Originally posted by Ray View Post
          If you do not have context descriptions enabled (e.g. you are using the JS version), AND the page has no meta description, then Zoom is forced to use the first few lines of the page content for description (because there is nothing better available).
          The problem with this for me is that the search results display my topic "title" (the first <h1> tag on the page) as part of the page content. Since I want to also display the Title of page (the <title> tag) in the search results, this means that the title appears twice. Is there any way that I can work around this?

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          • #6
            Yes, you can include a meta description on the page, or turn on the context display feature.

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            • #7
              You can also use ZOOMSTOP/ZOOMRESTART tags to exclude parts of your page as described here:
              Q. How do I prevent parts of my webpage from being indexed?

              So if you have a <h1> tag which repeats your title, then you'd probably want to exclude the <h1> tag in question with these tags.
              --Ray
              Wrensoft Web Software
              Sydney, Australia
              Zoom Search Engine

              Comment

              • #8
                Originally posted by Ray View Post
                You can also use ZOOMSTOP/ZOOMRESTART tags to exclude parts of your page as described here:
                Q. How do I prevent parts of my webpage from being indexed?

                So if you have a <h1> tag which repeats your title, then you'd probably want to exclude the <h1> tag in question with these tags.
                Thank you: that solves my problem.

                Comment

                • #9
                  But it isn't the ideal solution as the text in the headings probably contains good key words that summarizes the page content. By not indexing the headings you are possibly missing keywords and reducing the quality of the search results rankings.

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