12  Control the metadata / SEO

12.1 Package metadata

12.1.1 Basic information in DESCRIPTION

The first step towards making your package easier to find by search is to polish those DESCRIPTION fields:

• Description;
• Details;
• URL by adding the R-universe URL. Example

12.1.2 How to add keyword labels to an R package?

R-universe’s search algorithm uses keywords associated with a package.

If the R package is hosted on GitHub you can add keywords by configuring repository topics.

Alternatively, you can specify keywords in the X-schema.org-keywords field in your package DESCRIPTION file. This field is permitted on CRAN as well.

The build system may also add some keywords automatically based on analysis of the package, including the names of system libraries that the package links to, or language tags like c++ or openmp.

12.1.3 How to increase the rank of a package?

One aspect might be to get more GitHub stars. Read about ideas in the blog post “Marketing Ideas For Your Package”.

12.1.4 How to get a package logo shown in the packages tab?

We use the same conventions as pkgdown to find a logo for the package. It either needs to be in one of the locations checked by pkgdown:::find_logo() (man/figures/logo.png and man/figures/logo.svg) or set as an opengraph image in your _pkgdown.yml.

12.2 Individual (contributor, maintainer) metadata

12.2.1 How to link a maintainer email addresses to a username on R-universe?

We use the GitHub username that is associated with a given email address. If the email address that you use in the R package maintainer field, or in commits, is the same as your GitHub account, everything just works. If you use different email addresses, you can easily add additional email addresses in your GitHub settings.

Once you have validated your email address on GitHub, subsequent builds of R packages will be able to associate the package and contributions to your user account. We collect statistics during the build process, so the changes will not become visible until the next build of each package.

12.2.2 My profile picture or contributor statistics do not show up

Same as above. If no picture shows up, you probably need to register the email address that you use as R package maintainer in your GitHub settings, and wait for the package to be rebuilt.