Edge Delivery Services Metadata

Imran Khan
4 min readApr 9, 2024

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In this blog post, we aim to delve into the comprehensive understanding of Edge Delivery Services metadata. We will explore its intricacies, how it functions, and the significant role it plays in enhancing our operations. Join us as we unravel the impact and importance of this key element in the realm of Edge Delivery Services.

Metadata is essentially a term used to describe data or information about other data. To understand this concept more clearly, consider the following example often seen in HTML coding, specifically within the <meta> tags located inside the <head> tag.

In this context, the metadata provides crucial information about the webpage or the site itself. This can include a wide range of details such as the title of the page, a brief description, associated images, the URL, and even specific elements related to social media platforms like Twitter.

Moreover, metadata can also encompass custom <meta> tags. These tags are user-defined and can be tailored to specific needs, providing additional or unique information about the webpage.

The power of metadata lies in its ability to provide context and enhance understanding, allowing for more effective organization, management, and use of the data in question. In essence, metadata is a critical component in the realm of data management and plays a pivotal role in how we interact with and understand the vast digital landscapes we navigate daily.

In short, metadata.xlsx is a spreadsheet that allows you to centrally manage metadata for SEO of your site. It allows setting default metadata, exclude page sections from indexing, and more.

Metadata tags can be seen as part of view page source. It will never visible or page.

In Edge Delivery Services, there are multiple ways to define site or page metadata.

Incorporate below Metadata table to delineate all meta tags.

It will generate below meta tags after authoring above Metadata table within index page.

Now, point to be noted here. if we have more than 100 pages than we have to define this metadata table for all of those pages. To resolve this issue and to apply metadata to all pages, we can create a metadata Google Sheet in root directory.

Create below Google Sheet within root directory of your project as shown below:

Below is the screenshot of metadata file created under root folder.

Below is the content added as part of added metadata sheet. The wildcard * (the asterisk) can be used as a prefix or suffix, allowing for flexible matches on the URL pathname. Typical examples include /news/** or **/news/**.

Click on below preview and publish button to make it available on site.

Below are the view data source from contactus and news page showing different meta tags depending on the mapping.

On the homepage which index Google Doc, information is displayed from both Google Documents and Google Sheets metadata. Initially, the system prioritizes the metadata found in the current index Google Document. However, if any data is missing or not present in the indexed Google Documents, the system will then retrieve the necessary information from the Google metadata sheet. This ensures a comprehensive and thorough presentation of data on the homepage for users to access and engage with.

Notes:

The order of the entries in the list dictates the order of how the data is applied. The final order of the metadata is as follows:

If there is metadata configured in the /.helix/config.xlsx:

  • Page level metadata block wins over
  • Folder-mapped metadata sheet wins over
  • Metadata sheet(s) in configured order over
  • Blueprint metadata

if there is no configured order:

  • Page level metadata block wins over
  • Folder-mapped metadata sheet wins over
  • Global Metadata sheet (/metadata.xlsx)
  • Blueprint metadata

Edge Delivery Services Overview
Development
Personalized Google Drive
Sidekick Chrome Extension
Page Hierarchy
Local environment Setup
Page HTML Structure
Section Metadata
Metadata
Redirects
Response Headers
Access excel data in JSON format
Fragment
Forms
Indexing
Services Sitemap and robots.txt
Code Structure
Card Block Example

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Thank you!

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