Technote about r-universe search and SEO

[jeroen]

A technote highlighting the advanced search capabilities, ranking algorithm, and SEO tips.

Main message: R-universe helps packages become more visible and discoverable. The most important thing is the search. We explain how it works and what package authors can do to improve their SEO.

Discuss:

• New advanced search lets users filter by specific fields as indexed by the build system.
• Search results are ranked by a combination of a search match score and package quality (pagerank) score
• Search score is a weighted combination of matches in title, description, keywords, vignette titles, exports: https://github.com/r-universe-org/cranlike-server/blob/master/app.js#L52-L80
• Package rank score is a combination of quality indicators: https://github.com/r-universe-org/help#how-is-the-package-rank-score-calculated.

Simple SEO tips:

• Use good keywords! A search match on a keyword is a high match score. Keywords are taken from GitHub, but you can also specify them in X-schema.org-keywords: in the description file. This field is also allowed on CRAN.
• Get some stars on GitHub :)
• Multiple contributors is better

@maelle

[maelle]

The search for good keywords could be paired with making sure the package's description/title/README make the package mission crystal clear. We could suggest people ask for others for their opinion on both keywords, and description/title/README.