Leaving Meta Description empty

[ren!]

Hi!
When the Meta Desc. is empty and there is only a gallery in the contentbox something strange like this shows up in the frontend source code:

<meta name="description" content="(% gallery name=leinwaende %)" />

I think this only happens with "get_header"
I know that Meta desc. is a powerfull tool in SEO, but in some cases its just better to let google do the job and not fill the Description automatically.

I propose to show no meta description tag when the meta Desc Box is empty
as we dont know whats inside the content box

[shawn_a]

Thats the shortcode from your content for the gallery,

get_header uses uses content excepts for meta desc when its missing. afaik you would have to write your own header function for that.

[Carlos]

To remove that automatic excerpt in meta descriptions, a temporary fix for this could be inserting some space character in the page's meta desc field.

[ren!]

yes ... working around should be no problem
but I think it is better to deliver no meta-description when there is no description in the desc. field.

- gallery isn't the only Plugin with strange characters, just think of simple Input Tabs. It even uses different charcters.
- Google is not too bad in creating snippets when there is no meta-Desc. e.g. WIkipedia doesn't use Meta description, but the snippets are OK. Sometimes Google even ignores the description, when the search-qery has not too much to do with the description

conclusion: inserting automatic page-excerpts into the meta description is worse than delivering no description at all.
Thats why I posted in the Feature Request Topic.

[shawn_a]

Well this is a known issue in that content filters are not run on auto excerpts for meta.
https://github.com/GetSimpleCMS/GetSimpleCMS/issues/347

Your conclusion is debatable, would love more input on this, I agree that an excerpt is not really a description.

[mvlcek]

Hi!
When the Meta Desc. is empty and there is only a gallery in the contentbox something strange like this shows up in the frontend source code:

<meta name="description" content="(% gallery name=leinwaende %)" />
propose to show no meta description tag when the meta Desc Box is empty
as we dont know whats inside the content box

If you use the I18N plugin, you can use get_i18n_header(), which removes such shortcuts.
But it still uses the text of the page, if the meta description is empty.

[Carlos]

conclusion: inserting automatic page-excerpts into the meta description is worse than delivering no description at all.

Totally agree. I never liked this feature of GS. (Also, the way the excerpt is generated, the last word is often truncated.)

At least this automatic excerpt should be optional (via gsconfig or whatever), as I had already suggested some time ago.

[shawn_a]

Yeah I would love to bring the mother of all excerpt functions into core.
..numchars, break on word, striphtml, ellipsis, link pattern, start depth etc.

I would hate to do any work on it until its fixed proper, like hooks to replace the whole damn header crap and all meta tags.

Not fond of adding everything as an option to gsconfig, with preference of inheritance and overrides instead.

But I can maybe work this in to 3.2.2

[shawn_a]

https://github.com/GetSimpleCMS/GetSimpleCMS/issues/591
see how easy that was.

[Carlos]

Yeah, I suppose I should have raised the issue again, sorry.