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How to Use Meta Tags to Control AddSearch Results

Meta tags provide information to browsers and search engine crawlers about how to render and index web pages. In AddSearch, meta tags let you manage which pages get indexed, what content appears in your search results, and how users can filter those results.

This guide explains the key meta tags relevant to AddSearch and how to implement them effectively.

What Are Meta Tags?​

Meta tags are HTML elements placed inside the <head> section of your web page. They do not display content on the page itself but provide metadata such as descriptions or indexing instructions.

Example syntax:

<html>
  <head>
    <meta name="description" content="Summary of the web page.">
    <meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/image.jpg">
  </head>
  <body>
  </body>
</html>

Note: Meta tags are void elements, meaning they only have a start tag and their data is stored in attributes like name, property, and content.

AddSearch supports standard meta tags and Open Graph (og) meta tags, which use property instead of name. These tags help configure the indexing and presentation of your site’s content within search results.

1. Decide What Content Gets Indexed​

Use the robots meta tag to control how crawlers index your page:

  • Allow indexing (default): Do not add a robots tag, and all crawlers will index your page.

  • Disallow all crawling:

    <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">

    Use this when you do not want the page to appear in any search results.

  • Disallow following links but allow indexing:

    <meta name="robots" content="nofollow">

    Useful to prevent indexing of linked spammy or user-generated content.

  • Disallow specific crawler (e.g., Googlebot):

    <meta name="googlebot" content="noindex">

    Restricts a single search engine from indexing the page.

The robots meta tag controls whether or not a page gets indexed and included in search results.

2. Control What Appears in Search Results​

You can influence how AddSearch and other search engines display your pages by setting these meta tags:

Description​

Provide a concise summary of your page using the description or Open Graph og:description meta tags:

<meta name="description" content="Short summary of your page content.">
<meta property="og:description" content="Short summary of your page content.">

This summary often appears as snippet text in search results.

Image​

AddSearch supports showing thumbnails in search results using the Open Graph image tag. To specify an image:

<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/image.jpg">

To enable image display in AddSearch results:

  1. Go to your Dashboard > Setup > Documents and crawling.
  2. Enable Featured images.
  3. Upload or specify your images using the og:image tag.
  4. Trigger a full re-crawl in the Dashboard's Index tools section to update the index with images.

Enabling Meta Descriptions in AddSearch​

From the Dashboard:

  1. Navigate to Setup > Look & Feel.
  2. Enable Show meta descriptions in search results to display your page summaries.

3. Use Metadata to Filter Search Results​

AddSearch allows filtering based on custom metadata defined in meta tags. Use custom fields meta tags to provide structured data for filtering.

Example use case: a book store website where each product page includes custom fields such as genre, format, and author.

Syntax for Custom Fields​

<meta name="addsearch-custom-genre" content="fiction; thriller; mystery">
<meta name="addsearch-custom-format" content="ebook; paperback; hardcover">
<meta name="addsearch-custom-author" content="Jane Doe">
  • Separate multiple values with semicolons or line breaks.
  • Each custom field uses the prefix addsearch-custom- followed by the field name.

These custom fields populate filters in AddSearch search interfaces, enabling users to narrow results by these attributes.

To learn how to set up and enable filtering using custom fields, see Filtering with custom fields in AddSearch.

Additional Resources​

By using these meta tags, you can manage the visibility and appearance of your pages within AddSearch results and leverage metadata for powerful search filtering.