Meta Tags in Search Results pages

[CarlSaunders]

Most of my sites rely heavily on the Search Results page to display the catalog content / products (I do not want to use Section Pages for a number of reasons).

I'm getting indexed OK in Google, but it would be much better if I could have control over the <TITLE> and <META DESC> tags on the Search Results page. Interestingly, the Search Results do have <meta name="keywords" included.

I appreciate that they will be the same for whatever the search is, but it would clean up the Google listing and I could get some important keywords included if a generic Title/Desc was set up.

I currently use the following script (just for appearance) but this does nothing for Google:

<Script>window.document.title = "Shades of Time - <Actinic:S_PAGETITLE/>";</Script>

Any ideas on creating a proper <TITLE> and <META DESC> tag for the Search Results page??

[Bruce]

Carl,

The search results page is displayed within the 'Checkout Pages layout', you can access that overall layout in 'Design | Library | Layouts'.

I would suggest creating a custom variable and using it for your custom title.

Kind regards,

[CarlSaunders]

Thanks Bruce,

I've set up the two new variables 'TITLE' and 'METADESC' as suggested.

However I cannot see "Checkout Pages Layout" where you say it should be in 'Design | Library | Layouts'.

In 'Design | Library' I have 'Checkout Area', 'Checkout Button' and 'Checkout Prompt' ???

[TraceyG]

Hi Carl,

In v8 you can control which outer layouts are used for which pages by going to 'Design | Themes | Advanced | Page Layouts' and clicking the 'Advanced Page Configuration' button. This allows you to assign different outer layout selectors (which offer a particular range of outer layouts to the merchant) to different pages. You'll see there that the 'Search Results Page' is actually using 'StandardLayout' - which is the default overall layout selector set in 'Site Options | Layouts'.

If you want code just to show on the search results page you can put a condition block around it that says:

<actinic:variable name="PageType" /> == "Search Results"

I hope this helps.