Yikes!!! General Prod Meta configs not updating!

[DrByte]

So, basically you're saying that you want to completely turn off the automated stuff and hand-code all your metatag content one by one?

[Feznizzle]

No, not necessarily. I like automating the title. And I probably would not object to the automated description, if it did not repeat the title.

Setting that aside, ZC meta description is basically doing what the google bot will do anyway (scrub html, present text as description). Difference being that meta descriptions are limited to 200 characters. So what happens to the extra portion that SE's won't take? Do they lop it off and only present your 1st 200 words?

By giving a meta description, you are telling SE's "This is what I want you to present in the search results." If they lop off 700 characters, only take 200, then you best hope nobody is looking for what appears deeper in the body of your description.

On the other hand, if you have no meta description, you are not giving SE's any instruction about what to present. They simply log everything from your page. Now lets say someone searches for something that appears below that first 200 characters in your meta desc.

What will google present to the searcher?

I'm not sure. It's kind of a rhetorical question. I suspect google logs both, meta descrip and actual content. And they probably automatically decide what to show, based on key word usage.

[Feznizzle]

Ok, I just ran into all these problems again while working on a ZC154 so I wanted to update this thread.

The fixes on Post#10 suggests searching for a string of code (KEYWORDS), then replacing with text provided. Something has changed in code, so you just have to find the KEYWORDS string that looks similar, then make the change.

At the end of post #10, I pointed out another problem and asked how to fix it:

Meta Title shows, then the description wastes content by repeating the title yet again.

Can somebody show me which line of code to kill in order to stop that?

When you get indexed, your page will show up like this (problem highlighted in red):
----
Here is Your Product Title
Here is Your Product Title - This product sure is wonderful. Would you like to
buy it? You won't regret it! I have lots of things to say about it, only no spa...
----

Anyway, I figured out how to stop the title from repeating. Find this file:
/public_html/includes/modules/MY_TEMPLATE/meta_tags.php

Around line 274 (asdfafdafd), you will find this:
define('META_TAG_DESCRIPTION', str_replace('"','',TITLE . ' ' . $meta_products_name . SECONDARY_SECTION . $meta_products_description . ' '));

Change to this:
define('META_TAG_DESCRIPTION', str_replace('"','',TITLE . ' ' . $meta_products_description . ' '));

After you do that, your page will show up like this:
----
Here is Your Product Title
This product sure is wonderful. Would you like to buy it? You won't regret it! I have
lots of things to say about it, and plenty of space to say whatever I want.
----

Hope this helps somebody! :)