Background

We are in the process of refining our site's metadata. The metadata are contained in the head of your pages and are essential for searches, both by search engines and by our School of Medicine search. In particular, we are concerned with the 'Description' and 'Keywords' data.

Keywords are a small set of words designed to convey the subject of your website. The Description is a short sentence or two which describes your program. It is at least partially displayed in the Google search results along with a link to your page.

What We Need From You

We are requesting that each of you review your site's metadata. If your metadata is inaccurate, missing or out of date, please let us know so that we can work with you to correct it.

You may also find that you have several sets of metadata which may need to be combined. Please let us know if this is the case.

How To Do It

In order to view your current metadata open your site in a browser window. In IE go to View>Source. Scan through the code at the top of the page for code which has this syntax:

<META name="description" content="Short descriptive sentence here.">

<META name="keywords" content="specific words relating to your site's content">

For example, this is the metadata from UCSF's website:

<META name="description" content="The University of California at San Francisco is the only campus of UC dedicated solely to graduate and professional study. UCSF's schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and dentistry, as well as the graduate division programs, consistently rank in the top of their fields. Scientific research at UCSF has continuously paved the way for future discoveries, resulting in several nobel prizes and continually improving health care.">

<META name="keywords" content="UCSF University of California San Francisco college research biomedical medical health science clinical epidemiology molecular cellular academic university school medicine uc nursing dentristry pharmacy pharmaceutical graduate patient care residency fellowship internship physical pediatrics anesthesia surgery training ">

Let Us Know

If your metadata is missing or inaccurate, or if you would like assistance, please contact us. We will be glad to work with you.