Automatic Updated Changed How Description Works To Show Random Junk Text, Awful.

  • When the plugin automatically updated at some point, it changed the meta description of my homepage to show a random snippet of text from the page instead of the site tagline which it had been before, and Google indexed the junk description which now shows under my link in the results. Also, the plugin caused my hidden admin URL to be indexed as an RSS feed which Google flagged as an error when trying to crawl it. Neither are acceptable, but changing the meta description source without the site owner knowing disqualifies this an an SEO plugin as that is one of the most critical parts of SEO.

    As I type this I realized I had installed this plugin on my client’s WordPress sites also, and bringing them up in Google now shows randomized descriptions, I would give the plugin negative one star now after realizing this.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    Hello!

    The issues you listed do not concern The SEO Framework plugin. It’s how Google functions erratically and not according to expectations.

    Google will often ignore custom descriptions and grab anything from the page if it better fits the search query than your custom description. They’ve been doing this more aggressively recently. To learn more, see https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/snippet.

    I quote:

    Google will sometimes use the <meta name="description"> tag from a page to generate a snippet in search results, if we think it gives users a more accurate description than would be possible purely from the on-page content.

    You can insert a custom meta description via the SEO Settings page for the homepage. It may suggest using the tagline, which it has done since TSF v2.6.0, launched in December 2016 (almost 7 years ago) — no update since has changed this behavior.

    All other issues you listed are about how WordPress functions. TSF does not affect most of this standard behavior, for it either can’t or shouldn’t.

    First, you must understand this about Google:

    1. Google will crawl anything that remotely looks like a URL.
    2. Google will crawl any URL it finds on the web. Even if it leads to your admin area.
    3. Google will remember every URL found on the web and recrawls those periodically to see if anything changes.

    As for WordPress:

    1. WordPress or the theme may output a link to the admin area. TSF does not output such links.
    2. I’m unsure how you hid the admin area, but if Google finds a link, they will crawl it.
    3. WordPress blocks indexing of the admin area via the robots tag.

    As for feeds:

    1. WordPress and the theme may output links to feeds. TSF does not output such links.
    2. Google crawls all feed URLs automatically. The feeds need to be indexable for podcasts to work in Google services.
    3. Via TSF’s “SEO Settings > Feed Settings” you can block the indexing of feeds. However, this won’t affect your site’s ranking, and may cause issues with podcasts. Hence, this feature is disabled by default.

    Only via adjusting the robots.txt file, can you block the crawling of certain pages. Even then, this is largely ineffective. See https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots/intro. I’ll quote their warning:

    Warning: Don’t use a robots.txt file as a means to hide your web pages from Google search results.

    If other pages point to your page with descriptive text, Google could still index the URL without visiting the page. If you want to block your page from search results, use another method such as password protection or noindex.

    Because of that first rule in the warning, we do not offer a way to hide pages, for it would go against the user’s expectation. If you need to block pages from being accessed, consider using a security plugin or adjusting the hosting configuration.

    I would appreciate you update the review to reflect the actual performance of the plugin.

    • This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by Sybre Waaijer. Reason: typo

    @amritab that problem is not from Seo Framework ( aka Autodescription). I ve never had a problem with it for last 6 years!

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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