

Twitter’s appearance in Google: sort it out - vickrum
http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/twitters-appearance-google/

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dxjones
Excellent commentary. Twitter staff should read this article, when they're not
busy dealing with fail whales.

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sjs382
I disagree.

It's in the interest of both Google and Twitter to resolve this, but I think
the issue should be resolved by Google. Twitter should not use the meta-
description tag for anything other than its purpose.

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tdavis
They're not using it for its purpose. See:
<http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_meta_name.asp>

_Description: Defines a description of the document_

The "document" in this case is a specific tweet which can best be described
with its content since it is a self-imposed summary as-is. In short, you're
wrong.

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sjs382
w3schools is not an authority and has no affiliation with the w3c.

With that said though, I see your point. I still stand by the fact that Google
should be the one to parse this information and Twitter shouldn't be preparing
it specifically for Google. Similar to how some YahooSearchMonkey developers
are doing it with yahoo:

<http://csarven.ca/temp/ysm_serp-07.png> <http://identi.ca/notice/2691626>

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buugs
Why should google go out of their way to fix shortcommings of anothers
website, twitter will be brought extra traffic by those not using
twittersearch and google has nothing to gain by replacing twittersearch.

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sjs382
Because Google's goal is "to organize the worlds information."

Twitter's goal is not "to make organizing our data easier for Google."

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tdavis
Twitter's goal should be "to properly use html tags/properties in a way that
does not ruin search results". If Twitter provided no meta description, Google
would be forced to create their own description, which you could then blame
them for getting wrong. Instead, Twitter uses the tag inappropriately, which
Google trusts.

This isn't Google's problem; it is Twitter's. Whether or not Twitter _cares_
is a different story entirely.

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sjs382
Whether twitter cares or not, Google should care. That's what this issue boils
down to. It's a problem with the Google user's experience, not the Twitter
user's experience, despite who's fault it is.

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mcoles
The meta description tag should be used to describe the _page_. Twitter is
using it on every tweet to describe its (ie Twitter's) _site_. So the
description ought to really be the full tweet as that would exactly describe
it.

