Descriptions Not Working > Folder description not used

DanCarl97 · November 29, 2013

Site Name: www.meljones.info

The Problem:

The 'Meta Descriptions', that are set in the Folder/Page settings do not reflect those that show up on Google, and upon further investigation, are not updated in the actual HTML of the page. Only the Twitter and Facebook descriptions are updated. I contacted Smugmug two months ago about this, and they said the development team would be told about it but I have heard nothing since.

Steps to Recreate the problem:

Open the settings for a Page or Folder
Change the 'Meta Description'.
Wait up to 48 hours for the change to update.

Example:

The following is about a page on my website, but the same applies to every page or folder.

On line 31 of this copy of the HTML source code, you can see the actual Meta Description that is part of the page, and where google obtains its descriptions for your page, and that is quite an important part of SEO. Around that code, for example Line 20 shows the 'Meta Description' I had set in preferences. Obviously, there must be a small part where the code has been missed off, but this is a core factor in SEO and really needs to be fixed.

I am using Google Chrome on Mac OS X 10.9 but I've tried it on multiple devices and this is obviously a fault with the HTML generation.

Thanks,
Dan Jones

bobbyhero · November 29, 2013

I'm having our engineers take a look. I'm hoping one will respond here with a bit more detail once they've had a peek.

meljones · December 15, 2013

Hi,

Can we please have an update as to what's going on? It's really not helping SEO when all the pages appear to have the same content to google.

Thanks,
Mel

DanCarl97 · February 1, 2014

It's been over two months since this was posted and there has been no solution. Any update from the engineers please?

denisegoldberg · February 25, 2014

Can we get an update on this please?

--- Denise

DanCarl97 · March 2, 2014

Our site has started falling down the search listings and those pages with the same descriptions? Yeah, they've been removed from the index for having 'the same content'.

This should be a quick fix. It's just one piece of code that would be set to another value. It's been EIGHT MONTHS. Now our web presence is being damaged by Smugmug's ignorance.

Can we please have an update on this? Or is Smugmug truly falling down the drain, as seen in other recent threads. Smugmug's support just lately has been awful.

denisegoldberg · March 5, 2014

Bump for a status please.

Words are important in a site that contains mainly photos. Why are our folder descriptions not used?

Can this at least be moved to the active bug list category???

--- Denise

denisegoldberg · March 17, 2014

bump AGAIN

Why is it that we can enter folder descriptions but those folder descriptions are not used to build the descriptions used by Google?

This is very important to our SEO.

--- Denise

DanCarl97 · March 19, 2014

Here's my Google Indexed Pages graph. Well over half, almost two thirds of my pages have gone - specifically the ones with identical descriptions.

Not one of my top level pages are in the index.

[Deleted User] · March 22, 2014

Hi there!
I have contacted the SmugMug-Heros a few days ago not knowing, that this issue has already been address in November 2013. My folders and pages also have the wrong meta descriptions and keywords. I got the answer, that they have heard of a couple reports of this and that they are gathering data to see if they can figure out why this is happening. Now I am pretty unsure, if it was a good idea to replace my self hosted wordpress installation by SmugMug last month (I did that because I was tired about the amount of time I had to spent for administration). Does it really take more than four months to fix such a pretty important issue? And why is there no response to denisegoldberg's bumps for status? On the other hand I was very surprised about the fast help of the SmugMug-Heros with an other issue.
I don't know!
Have a nice weekend!
Bernd
www.berndhartenberger.com

denisegoldberg · March 22, 2014

berndhartenberger wrote: »

I have contacted the SmugMug-Heros a few days ago not knowing, that this issue has already been address in November 2013. My folders and pages also have the wrong meta descriptions and keywords. I got the answer, that they have heard of a couple reports of this and that they are gathering data to see if they can figure out why this is happening.

It's unfortunate that no one from smug has responded in this bug report.
SmugMug, we need a status on this! Better yet, we need a fix.

If looking for evidence of the problem they just need to do a site search in Google. For example, search for site:www.denisegoldberg.com. I have a description in my profile. That description shows for the site, for every folder, for every keyword, for every smug standard page (like popular photos). It should show for the site. It should not show for folders that have a meta description. For standard smugmug pages I believe the description should be prefaced by the type of page.

Why are my folders not showing the meta description that I specified for them?

--- Denise

denisegoldberg · March 22, 2014

really? Why on earth would the robots.txt on my site be tagged with a SmugMug ad???

--- Denise

denisegoldberg · March 22, 2014

Here is my Google Index Status from the past year:

The last high point just short of the mid-point was from July 14, 2013. Things have been steadily going downhill from there. On 7/14/2013 the total indexed was 28,868. The latest total indexed is 3,578. That's a huge drop.

This is a serious problem, and one that I don't believe I caused.

I did just manually submit the site to index as I haven't done that recently. I'm hoping that improves things, but I shouldn't need to resubmit it. And note that there was a submission in September of last year; the site has been dropping since before then.

--- Denise

pbandj · March 22, 2014

I assume you guys are already aware of this thread, but thought I'd share in case you haven't seen it:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=245969

Not that it addresses the problems referenced in this thread...just that it discusses other SEO problems I thought you might want to know about.

denisegoldberg · March 22, 2014

pbandj wrote: »

I assume you guys are already aware of this thread, but thought I'd share in case you haven't seen it:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=245969

Not that it addresses the problems referenced in this thread...just that it discusses other SEO problems I thought you might want to know about.

Thanks pbandj. I just repeated my last post in the thread you pointed to - I think the issue belongs there as opposed to in this thread. It seems that the two issues might be related though.

--- Denise

DanCarl97 · March 23, 2014

The image I previously posted wasn't really clear.

We changed our domain where the sudden increase is, and was adding lots of new pages of course with the new Smugmug. However, I stopped adding pages around the peak and it's been dropping ever since. It plummeted recently, with all the pages of the same description completely gone. I should add that that is EVERY SINGLE MAIN PAGE ON THE WEBSITE.

Not one of the pages in my navigation bar are in google anymore. My main site listing is simply the home page where I used to have a large sitelinks block.

Can Smugmug at least ACKNOWLEDGE the problem? I've sent this thread to the heroes, I've reported it to them direct before, there have been at least two versions of this thread and its been here since November (and I reported it before then).

[Deleted User] · March 25, 2014

Thank you very much!
Dear SmugMug-Team!

Thank you very much for fixing the description-issue.

It would be great if you fix the keyword-issue as well. Folders and pages still use meta keywords of the homepage.

Cheers!

DanCarl97 · March 25, 2014

Thanks for finally fixing the bug Smugmug.

Unfortunately, some damage has been done to our site but hopefully it'll recover in good time. I'll resubmit the entire site for reindexing in the hope it will be indexed as it used too.

Thanks, Dan

[Bug Fixed] ✓

Edit:

Looks like it's recovering well. We've got our Sitelinks back and most top-level pages!

meljones · March 25, 2014

Just to give an update - some of our pages are already starting to show up! Lucky us. That's within hours.

Thanks for fixing this bug!

UPDATE

We even have the sitelinks and the full Google+ integration back!

Only thing I've noticed is that Password Protected galleries and folders still use the default description but that may not be wanted. Personally, I do but it's not a big deal.

Good to finally not have to worry about this.

Descriptions Not Working > Folder description not used

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