I’m not a CSS expert/coder - Is there any easy way for me to have a better caption for Google Search results - for example the site description (or similar) from the “About Page”, for my discourse forum/News Plugin. Here (below) is what it looks like right now - when I search on google for “rapamycin news” and I would like a better top level textual description for the website before the list of posts: [f3de2014f4d268e0a5aecf5c407514fcddc79fef_2_640x213]

Do you have your site description filled out under admin -> settings? That’s the text that Google typically displays under search results. Outside of making sure the relevant information is present, Google kind of decides on its own what to show there.

Google has some tips on how to write meta descriptions that they can understand: [image] How to Write Meta Descriptions | Google Search Central | Documentation | ... Learn how to write a quality meta description tag that may be displayed for your page in Google Search results by following these best practices. [image] Improve snippets with a meta description makeover | Google Search Central...

Strangely - yes, I have all that information filled out in the settings - but it doesn’t get shown in google. I wonder if the News plugin somehow disables those settings or something.

Kris, Here is the strange thing - I have both areas filled out (and always have), but these fields seem to be completely ignored by google and don’t show up in the google listing for the site: Here are my inputs: [Screen Shot 2022-05-06 at 12.53.26 PM] But still, in google, this is all they show: [Screen Shot 2022-05-06 at 12.56.26 PM] Is it possible that ThePavillion’s News Plugin I use to make my site into a “blog” on the home page - causing problems for google? [image] News Plugin newspaper Plugin The News Plugin adds a new “News” route to your forum. The latest topics in a category(s) (or from an RSS feed) are displayed in a large, news-like format, with an optional sidebar with a topic list. It adds a link to the News route in the header bar. [Screen Shot 2020-02-03 at 10.23.34 PM] It is inspired by the Elektronauts news feed. page_facing_up Get the code bug Report a bug Lost? Not sure how to install a plugin? Follow the steps here. Make sure you check out all the site se…

I don’t know, but if there is not pure technical reason you are hitting the wall using term anti-aging drugs. It is quite controversial claim and Google has tendency clean such ones.

Ah - good point. I had not considered that. Let me play around with that.

But when I search on google for “anti-aging” drugs - it doesn’t seem they are blocking the term or descriptions with the term - so I think this must be a technical issue… [Screen Shot 2022-05-06 at 1.45.10 PM]

Unless the plugin is preventing the description from appearing, then I wouldn’t expect that to be an issue. Even if you have all the correct information supplied, Google decides what is ultimately shown based on whatever their algorithm for descriptions is. Even for Meta, instead of our supplied description… Google uses the content of our first pinned topic. [Screen Shot 2022-05-06 at 4.57.25 PM] [Screen Shot 2022-05-06 at 4.57.33 PM] I guess you can try experimenting? make some changes to the description and wait a few days to see if it shows up.

[image] Kris: make some changes to the description The current meta description, “Rapamycin and Anti-Aging Medicine Users' Group Discussion Forum”, is probably too short. Google might be deciding that a preview of the table rows is more useful to users than the 63 characters of the meta description. The links I posted in my other comment have tips on how to optimize it. [image] Kris: Google uses the content of our first pinned topic. That’s pretty interesting, because that text doesn’t appear in the bot view, but it seems like Google does use the bot view for some things, like the table rows in the rapamycin forum, and queries about this site like the one below. I wonder what makes them choose one view over the other. [serps]

Manipulating Google is… hard. If I’m looking for discourse meta, I get this: [kuva] Not exacly results of a forum — but you guys have done some tuning, I reckon. If I’ll do same type search than OP for my forum, I get same result, but without News plugin: [kuva] my headache is tags showing as pure text after heading That is not any bigger issue for me, because, as usual, the frontpage is less used when a search happends. If I search a topic I know it exists, I get quite normal result in the form that is useful for an user: [kuva] the first hit is the most fresh fish (that was indexed fast, not bad) second hit is description of that category Anything of this is not helping OP, but I’m trying to make a guess where we just have to live with the fact where Google works mysterious ways. And the most important thing is not what an admin wants or hopes, but an user gets what he/se/it needs. Or something.

How to optimize Google Site Description / Results for News Plugin/ Discourse Site

Product Support

j127 May 5, 2022, 3:22am 3

Google has some tips on how to write meta descriptions that they can understand:

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How to optimize Google Site Description / Results for News Plugin/ Discourse Site

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