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


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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 &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)

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?