Star rating appears in meta tag “og:description”

We apologize for the trouble you are experiencing with our plugin. Sometimes strange behavior may be caused by a plugin or theme conflict.

Please provide the answers to the following:

1. Have you performed a conflict check? If not, please do so. Did you discover a conflict?
2. Does the issue occur when using a default theme with only Yoast SEO active?
3. Does the issue occur with the current 4.9.x or 5.0.x version of WordPress?
4. Does the issue occur with the current 9.3 version of Yoast SEO?
5. Is the issue specific to a certain part of your site, like posts, products, categories, etc?
6. What template variables are used for the content type that incorrectly displays the ratings? Does removing all variables remove the rating in the description? Admin > SEO > Search Appearance > [content_type]
7. Did you entered a custom meta description at the edit post/page level that incorrectly displays the ratings? Does removing the custom description remove the rating in the description?

If there is a conflict with a plugin or a theme, you can create a?new GitHub issue?for our developers. Please report the issue to a third party developer as well.

If you didn’t find any conflicts, we think the issue is specific to your site. We’d need to investigate further but are unable to do so on these forums. You can?purchase Yoast SEO Premium?and receive our premium email support so we can help you further.

This thread has been marked as resolved due to lack of activity.

You’re always welcome to re-open this topic. Please read this post before opening a new request.

Thanks for understanding!

I’m in contact with the designer of the Yet Another Stars Rating.
The same problem appears in kk star ratings too.
In the Multi rating plugin the problem doesn’t exist.
I don’t know which side has the problem, yours or the star rating plugin side but you should investigate further before closing this issue.
So in order to help you here are the answers to your questions:

1. Have you performed a conflict check? If not, please do so. Did you discover a conflict?
– Didn’t do it yet…
2. Does the issue occur when using a default theme with only Yoast SEO active?
– It appears with default theme with YOAST and one rating plugin active
3. Does the issue occur with the current 4.9.x or 5.0.x version of WordPress?
– Only tested with 5.0.x version (5.0.2)
4. Does the issue occur with the current 9.3 version of Yoast SEO?
– Currently I have version 9.4 but I think the problem was there in 9.3 too.
5. Is the issue specific to a certain part of your site, like posts, products, categories, etc?
– The issue appears in any post that has a star rating, and is already rated
6. What template variables are used for the content type that incorrectly displays the ratings? Does removing all variables remove the rating in the description? Admin > SEO > Search Appearance > [content_type]
– I didn’t use any template variables. Just configured the rating plugins

7. Did you entered a custom meta description at the edit post/page level that incorrectly displays the ratings? Does removing the custom description remove the rating in the description?
– I didn’t entered any custom meta description

If you need any further information please tell me. Thanks!

• This reply was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by 0fux.

I am still not able to reproduce this behavior with defaults settings in Yoast SEO and the Yet Another Stars Rating plugin. I tried the auto insert and the shortcode for adding the rating to a post along with both rating types (author / visitor). I tried changing some settings in Yoast regarding the description but to no avail.

Please provide the following information (screenshots are probably the easiest):
Plugin Settings
* SEO > Search Appearance > Content Types > Posts (post)
* YASR > Settings > General Settings

Post Info
* Excerpt metabox > Excerpt
* Yoast metabox > Snippet Preview > Edit Snippet
* Yoast metabox > Social > Facebook > Facebook description

– It appears with default theme with YOAST and one rating plugin active

Which default theme and version did you use?

Hi, thanks for giving attention to this.
I did some more experiments in my local version.
I’m using the twentynineteen theme for the test sake.

I made screenshots but I don’t know how to upload images here!

You would need to upload the screenshot to an image site such as https://pasteboard.co/ or https://imgur.com/ and then post a link to the image in your post here.

Here are the links to the screenshots:

plugins activated:
https://pasteboard.co/HWRGSUM.png

Plugin Settings:
YOAST SEO > Search Appearance > Content Types > Posts (post):
https://pasteboard.co/HWRIk69.png

YASR > Settings > General Settings:
https://pasteboard.co/HWRISUz.png
https://pasteboard.co/HWRIZ0J.png
https://pasteboard.co/HWRJajx.png

Post Info:
* Excerpt metabox > Excerpt:
https://pasteboard.co/HWRJxu7.png

* Yoast metabox > Snippet Preview > Edit Snippet:
https://pasteboard.co/HWRJLzF.png

* Yoast metabox > Social > Facebook > Facebook description:
https://pasteboard.co/HWRJYwZ.png

Thank you for providing the screenshot as I was able to reproduce the issue. This happens when the ratings plugins auto-inserts the visitor rating into a post with little written content. The visitor rating includes text [Total: 0 Average: 0/5] next to the actual rating. This text is included when the Open Graph description is automatically generated.

To resolve, there are a few options:

1. Add more content to your post when auto-inserting to the end of the aritcle. Learn more about the Yoast SEO assessment regarding the length of your content here.
2. Remove the text by going to YASR > Settings > General Settings and changing Insert custom text to show before / after stars to Yes and entering a single space in the Custom text to display fields (one for before overall, one for before visitor, one for after visitor).
3. Disable the auto-insert and manually insert the rating using the plugin provided shortcode.

Hi, thank you for investigating further.

Before trying your solutions I would like to comment on your suggestions:
I still consider this a bug so your suggestions maybe workarounds but not real solution to the problem. We should focus on solving the root cause.

Now regarding your suggestions, point 1 is not guaranteed as I cannot guarantee the length of the content. Point 3 also is not a solution as I want something automatic. I don’t want to write the shortcode manually everytime.
I will try the point 2.

By default, Yoast SEO looks in this order for the Open Graph description
1. Custom Facebook description: https://pasteboard.co/HWRJYwZ.png
2. Custom excerpt: https://pasteboard.co/HWRJxu7.png
3. Auto-generated excerpt

As the rating plugin adds text directly to the content, the text is used to auto-generate the excerpt. This is independent of Yoast SEO as it’s a core WordPress feature.

To resolve the issue without using the three options previously mentioned, please add either a custom Facebook description or a custom excerpt as these override the auto-generated excerpt.

Things to note:
* The same excerpt is used for Twitter so you would also want to add a custom Twitter description.
* Yoast does offer an excerpt only template variable which ignores the auto-generated one but this only applies to the main post description, not the social descriptions. A feature request to add default templates for social data is under review here.

OK, now I see…
so some rating plugins add the rating in the content and your module cannot differentiate what is content and what is rating except if I explicitly define what I want in the description metatag by using the excerpt field or the facebook description field…
Correct?

That is correct.

This thread has been marked as resolved due to lack of activity.