SEO text formatting issue RSS

• • Reply
  JamieP1

  Member

  26 Points

  81 Posts

  SEO text formatting issue

  Jan 26, 2021 05:45 PM|JamieP1|LINK

  Hi

  Will give a small description of a problem i am facing but more information can be provided if required.

  My database is saving text from a HTML editor as below

  <p>Hi </p>

  I output this data on a webpage using the below Decoding

  txtDetails.Text = Server.HtmlDecode(o.Details);

  The webpage itself looks fine when viewing in any browser. I see the text Hi and thats it.

  I now search google for this product. The title is fine however the text that appears below the blue google text is displaying 

  p>Hi

  So it displays a p> before the text Hi.

  1. Is there something i could do to resolve this, i assume its to do with the encoding?
  2. Whatever change i make could take days for it to update in google so if anyone knows of a quick way to test any resolutions, would greatly help.

  Thanks

• • Reply
  KathyW

  Contributor

  5961 Points

  2466 Posts

  Re: SEO text formatting issue

  Jan 27, 2021 05:23 AM|KathyW|LINK

  "The webpage itself looks fine when viewing in any browser. I see the text Hi and thats it."

  What does the HTML code for that page look like near that output?  View the page source and see.

• • Reply
  Sean Fang

  Contributor

  2840 Points

  840 Posts

  Re: SEO text formatting issue

  Jan 27, 2021 07:17 AM|Sean Fang|LINK

  Hi JamieP1,

    

  The encoding works well from database to webpages as '&lt;p&gt;Hi &lt;/p&gt;' to '<p>Hi</p>'.

  Actually, the text is rendered as a html format in a html page but it does not mean the wrapper '<p></p>' disappears.

  '<', '>' are common special characters. If you fetch the value directly from the page as a html formatted text, you will probably meet an encoding problem.

      

  Could you please tell me how you use google to search for this product (as a string 'Hi')? 

  If you are using a HttpWebRequest and append the 'product' as a query string, you might need to encode the text again using 

  HttpServerUtility.UrlEncode, which URL-encodes a string and returns the encoded string.

   

  Reference: 

  https://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.ASP

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent-encoding

   

  Best regards,

  Sean

  .NET forums are moving to a new home on Microsoft Q&A, we encourage you to go to Microsoft Q&A for .NET for posting new questions and get involved today.
• • Reply
  JamieP1

  Member

  26 Points

  81 Posts

  Re: SEO text formatting issue

  Feb 03, 2021 10:20 AM|JamieP1|LINK

  Hi

  Due to time constraints, i used a Regex query to strip the text from any formatting which seems to have resolved the issue for now.

  I can post the code should anyone require.

  Thanks for your help anyway.