Meta Description Woes

Discussion in 'Websites' started by gford, May 12, 2005.

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  1. #1
    Hello all,

    I currently run a few mambo sites and have run across something that is a problem I think. Let me describe this..

    Mambo has a global configuration that allows you to set the description and keywords. So this is nice. But the problem is this appears on every page of your site in 1 of two ways

    1) Default Mambo does "Global Meta Description + Local" (appends). I modified this to be "Local + Global" (prepends)

    I am not sure that is even good, maybe the global meta shouldn't be appended at all?

    2) If there is no local meta data (descip or keywords) it uses the global config. Thus having the same meta data.

    THE PROBLEM : I think google/msn/yahoo consider these pages to be "similar" and thus won't show them and may in fact over the coming months de-index them??? True? False?

    So what is the best way to fix this, should I:

    1) Only use the Local meta data if it exists and if it doesn't leave blank?
    2) Keep it as is, append the global data to the local data
    3) Some other way that you all may suggest best?

    Thanks in advance for your time and help.
     
    gford, May 12, 2005 IP
    1 person likes this.
  2. cmeinck

    cmeinck Active Member

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    #2
    Glenn-
    I'm going through this problem right now. Ideally, I'd like to use the "local" meta descriptions/keywords if they exist. If not, have Mambo pull the globals.

    Have you found any modifications that will enable this?

    How did you change to local + Global from global + local?

    Thanks.
    Chris
     
    cmeinck, Nov 4, 2005 IP
  3. cmeinck

    cmeinck Active Member

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    #3
    I found the fix.

    Works very well. It gives you local meta tags. If it doesn't find them, it uses the globals.

    Much better than straight globals across the board!

    -Chris
     
    cmeinck, Nov 4, 2005 IP
  4. gford

    gford Peon

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    #4
    My fix was to modify includes/mambo.php to always have local meta tags appear first.

    You can visit my sites and see how it looks.
     
    gford, Nov 5, 2005 IP
  5. cmeinck

    cmeinck Active Member

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    #5
    The fix that I found actually allows you to use local page meta's -- it will only use global metas if you leave them out. This way, you have a short suitable meta description and list of keywords.

    The only problem that I have with it is the inability to use global metas for the Homepage. It uses metas from the most recent story. If a story doesn't have metas, it pulls metas from the subsequent story that does. Odd, but I'll take it.
     
    cmeinck, Nov 5, 2005 IP