[Rd] Adding a "description" meta-tag to the R homepage

[peter dalgaard]

On Apr 1, 2011, at 08:49 , Tal Galili wrote:

> Hello all,
> I hope I'm writing to the correct place.
> 
> I believe that the R homepage will benefit from including the "description"
> meta tag in it's homepage.
> The reason is that google uses that tag to decide what to show when the R
> homepage shows up on a search result.
> The current description of the first result of searching "R" in google is:
> 
> "*R*, also called GNU S, is a strongly functional language and environment
> to statistically explore data sets, make many graphical displays of data
> from custom *..."*
> *
> *
> This defention is truncated.


Interesting. What's odd is that although that phrasing is used in multiple places on the net, it is not in the actual www.r-project.org/index.html, nor in any other "official" places that I can spot.

However, what gets displayed for SAS and Stata is not what is in their description tags?

SAS:
<meta content="SAS Business Analytics software -- 30+ years of experience and 50,000+ customer sites worldwide. View success stories, analyst reports & demos." name="description" />

Stata:
<meta name="description" content="Data Analysis and Statistical Software for Professionals" />

What gives?


> 
> 
> It seems that other statistical packages (and some known open source
> projects) already noticed this.  Here is what they write about themselves
> (when searching for their name on google):
> 
>   - SAS: 50,000 Customer Sites Use SAS for CRM, BI, Analytics & More-Get
>   Info
>   - SPSS: Analytical Software at SPSS.com. Specializing in data mining,
>   customer relationship management, business intelligence and data analysis.
>   - JMP: JMP is statistical software for expert data analysis, DOE, and Six
>   Sigma, from SAS. For Mac, Windows, and Linux.
>   - Stata: Integrated statistical package for data analysis, data
>   management and graphics.
>   - Perl: The Perl Programming Language at Perl.org. Links and other
>   helpful resources for new and experienced Perl programmers.
>   - Matematica: Wolfram Research, makers of Mathematica, the only fully
>   integrated technical computing software.
>   - It seems that Python, Ruby, and Matlab are not using any description
>   tag (and their google description is also truncated)
> 
> 
> I hope this helps.
> 
> Best,
> Tal
> 
> 
> ----------------Contact
> Details:-------------------------------------------------------
> Contact me: Tal.Galili at gmail.com |  972-52-7275845
> Read me: www.talgalili.com (Hebrew) | www.biostatistics.co.il (Hebrew) |
> www.r-statistics.com (English)
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel

-- 
Peter Dalgaard
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk  Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com