R devel - Apr 2011 - Adding a "description" meta-tag to the R homepage

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.


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@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]]

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 &amp; 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