Meta description generation

  • Resolved Paul Bursnall

    (@style960)


    4 years, 7 months ago

    Hi,

    Since updating to 4.1.4 (and WP to 5.8) the meta description that is auto generated displays characters beyond the initial paragraph, and reports this as ‘too long’.

    Example, previously if I used an opening paragraph:

    The opening paragraph should be between 120 and 155 characters to display properly on Google search engine results pages (SERPS).

    That would be the only text used by the meta description. Now the meta description displays additional characters from the second paragraph of the post, and returns as ‘too long’.

    Can you advise please?

    Thanks,
    Paul.

    • This topic was modified 4 years, 6 months ago by Jan Dembowski.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

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  • Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    4 years, 6 months ago

    Hi Paul,

    Do you have an example of what the description was before and what it became after, with the exact text (content) parsed? A link to the affected page would help 🙂 Thanks!

    Thread Starter Paul Bursnall

    (@style960)

    4 years, 6 months ago

    Hi Sybre,

    Previously the meta description on my example would have been:

    “The opening paragraph should be between 120 and 155 characters to display properly on Google search engine results pages (SERPS).”

    Since updating, the metabox is auto completed with:

    “The opening paragraph should be between 120 and 155 characters to display properly on Google search engine results pages (SERPS). WordPress software is designed…”

    Flagged as too long – 161 characters.

    I know I can override it manually but I would like to avoid that for authors.

    URL is [ link moved to link field ]

    Thanks,
    Paul.

    Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    4 years, 6 months ago

    Hi Paul,

    Thank you for the details!

    Have you updated from TSF v3.1.4 (Oct 9, 2018) or earlier? In v4.0.0 (Sep 9, 2019) we changed how descriptions are generated.

    You can read how descriptions are generated here.

    Briefly, in this scenario, the plugin trims to 160 characters and then adds a single character: …, making it 161. This is intentional behavior.

    We do this because when a sentence concludes at 160 characters, we won’t accidentally strip its final word. Search engines will add the ellipses anyway when the description is too long (or replaced). Besides, pixels are what matters, anyway, but that’s difficult for PHP.

    From the KB article linked above, about the description generator:

    PHP is a single-threaded scripting language[,] it can only do one thing at a time. We don’t want your site visitors to wait for a hidden tag to load[, so] our generator isn’t aware of your intent, nor does it calculate the pixels used. […] If you want to make [the description] perfect, consider if you have the time to do so, and fill in the meta tag yourself.

    Although we flag 161 as “too long,” you can read that as “good enough.” From our FAQ, “What do the colors tell me?”:

    Red is an error that you must resolve. Yellow is a non-critical warning that you may want to address. Green is good. Blue is informational and situational. Gray is undefined or unprocessable.

    If you’d like to do away with burdening the authors, consider our new headless mode (hint: conditional mode) :). Well, that concludes me having linked to almost every KB article I’ve written.

    I hope this explains the issue. Cheers!

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