meta/@name=description

Hi,

a few days ago, I came across a discussion about meta/@name=description 
and how it's used by search engines to provide a summary 
(<http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20090817#l-607>).

Contrary to what some people said, using it doesn't seem to be a waste 
of time, as it *is* being used to generate a summary in the search 
results. And, at least with the documents I am producing, it fails to 
generate a good one automatically.

A drawback is that it uses hidden metadata, and, even worse, is likely 
to duplicate information from the page. It seems what's needed is to 
markup the page so that a consumer can actually locate the description 
inside the page.

One way to do that would be a link relation, for instance:

<link rel="description" href="#desc"/>

...

<div id="desc">
   <h2>Abstract</h2>
   <p>
     ...description text...
   </p>
</div>


Feedback appreciated,

Julian

Received on Wednesday, 19 August 2009 11:46:39 UTC