Add <meta name=Date for SEO using mkdocs-git-revision-date-localized-plugin

[xsa]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking to leverage the mkdocs-git-revision-date-localized-plugin to add the Date <meta tag to my pages.

Been trying by adding the below to my main.html, in the {% extrahead %} block along with the other <meta tags, but it does not seem to work. Is there anything I've missed? Or has anyone achieve the same using something different?

<meta name="Date" scheme="iso8601" content="{{ git_revision_date_localized }}" />

Thanks in advance.

-X.

[squidfunk]

Did you set up theme extension, i.e. custom_dir? Without knowing exactly what you did, we can only guess.

[xsa]

Yes, theme extension is enabled. Everything is working from that perspective, as I'm using other blocks there too.

I also get the Last Updated data on each page, coming from the plugin, e.g. Last update: April 6, 2023

[kamilkrzyskow]

{%- block extrahead -%}
    {%- if page.meta and page.meta.git_revision_date_localized -%}
        <meta name="Date" scheme="iso8601" content="{{ page.meta.git_revision_date_localized_raw_iso_date }}">
    {%- endif -%}
{%- endblock -%}

Like you said in the response to squidfunk, the Last Update date appears, so I checked how the theme handles it:

mkdocs-material/src/partials/source-file.html

Line 29 in 958a8e0

{% if page.meta.git_revision_date_localized %}

but this contained a HTML tag, and the raw date string was needed, so I checked how the plugin stores the meta variables:

https://github.com/timvink/mkdocs-git-revision-date-localized-plugin/blob/6150fad41a83abbf7500cf9c75696c5193532305/mkdocs_git_revision_date_localized_plugin/plugin.py#L242-L243

luckily it does provide raw strings to the date.

---

The final result looked like this:

<meta name="Date" scheme="iso8601" content="2023-02-26">

However, doing a quick search online, I'm not sure whether or not the meta name="date" tag even exists 😅 or if it's made up together with the scheme attribute. Finding how to get the raw date was easier than checking this.

[xsa]

AH! Pretty neat, it seems to do the trick. I had also looked at the source and how the page would handle it, so I've tried with {{ page.meta.git_revision_date_localized_raw_iso_date }} and it was not working.I did not enclose the meta tag in the if statement like you though. Thank you very much!

[kamilkrzyskow]

Using page.meta... without the if enclosure, leads to a page.meta is None error. This happens because the 404.html template also gets processed and it has no meta. I think that the whole error Traceback properly showcases where the issue originates.
Glad it works for you ✌️