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

[Roebuck,Paul L]

On 4/1/11 1:38 PM, "peter dalgaard" <pdalgd at gmail.com> wrote:

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

Preferences then?

R:
<meta name="description"
      content="Data Analysis and Statistical Software for the
Intelligentsia" />

    - or - 

<meta name="description"
      content="Not Your Father's Data Analysis and Statistical Software..."
/>


>> 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)
>>