Google Scholar Meta Tags: How to get your Blog Indexed in Google Scholar

If you are looking for a way to get your blog indexed in Google Scholar, then you are on the right page. Indeed, it is not usually a blog (especially those with the Blogger or BlogSpot platform) indexed by Google Scholar. Usually, Google Scholar only indexes scientific journal articles. But, what if your blog contains scientific articles? Wouldn't it be great if your blog was also indexed in Google Scholar?

This short article will give you a guide on indexing Blogs on Google Scholar. I uncovered this method when I developed a scientific journal indexing site. I also realized that Google Scholar also has special meta tags that make a web page indexable by it. Well, on this occasion, I will not only share what meta tags are used by Google Scholar, but also how to add Google Scholar meta tags to Blogger.

What is Google Scholar?

According to Wikipedia, "Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines."

Google Scholar is Google's indexing site. Unlike Google Search, Google Scholar will only index scientific articles. Google Scholar can index journals that publish scientific articles for one reason only: every article page in the journal has the Google Scholar meta tag!

What are Google Scholar Meta Tags?

Meta tags are a number of HTML templates that contain information about a web page. You can learn SEO meta tags on this blog too. For Google Scholar itself, the meta tags used are preceded by the word citation. The following are some of the meta tags that Google Scholar requests so that a page can be indexed by it:

<meta name="citation_title" content="The testis isoform of the phosphorylase kinase catalytic subunit (PhK-T) plays a critical role in regulation of glycogen mobilization in developing lung">
<meta name="citation_author" content="Liu, Li">
<meta name="citation_author" content="Rannels, Stephen R.">
<meta name="citation_author" content="Falconieri, Mary">
<meta name="citation_author" content="Phillips, Karen S.">
<meta name="citation_author" content="Wolpert, Ellen B.">
<meta name="citation_author" content="Weaver, Timothy E.">
<meta name="citation_publication_date" content="1996/05/17">
<meta name="citation_journal_title" content="Journal of Biological Chemistry">
<meta name="citation_volume" content="271">
<meta name="citation_issue" content="20">
<meta name="citation_firstpage" content="11761">
<meta name="citation_lastpage" content="11766">
<meta name="citation_pdf_url" content="http://www.example.com/content/271/20/11761.full.pdf">

It turns out that there are a lot of meta tags for Google Scholar. But don't worry because the mandatory meta tags are only a few of them.

How to Add Google Scholar Meta Tags to Blogger

As you know, that to add meta tags we have to edit the HTML of blogger. But this time I will ask you to add it in every article that you think needs to be indexed by Google Scholar. The main requirement is that the article must have a PDF file to download.

Why should you work on every post? Because we will create meta tags that match different post titles and dates. It's true that we can create them dynamically but I don't know what Blogger template you are using; each template may have a different id for the same element. Therefore, it is safer if we work on each post only.

First, add the Google Scholar Tags template below and fill it in according to the post information. Note that there are 5 spans with different IDs (don't rename each span's ID). The ID names for each span are very self-explanatory so you know what information you need to fill in. Here is a Google Scholar Tags template for Blogger.

<div id="blogToGsContainer" style="display:none !important;">
<span id="blogToGsAuthor">Zainurrahman</span>
<span id="blogToGsTitle">Google Scholar Meta Tags: How to get your Blog Indexed in Google Scholar</span>
<span id="blogToGsBlog">Writing and Blogging</span>
<span id="blogToGsDate">2022/08/23</span>
<span id="blogToGsPdf">https://mylink.pdf</span>
</div>

Put the Google Scholar Tags template at the very end of the post. Then, add the script below.

<script>
var gsMetaTags=[[document.getElementById("blogToGsAuthor").innerText],[document.getElementById("blogToGsTitle").innerText],[document.getElementById("blogToGsBlog").innerText],[document.getElementById("blogToGsDate").innerText],[document.getElementById("blogToGsPdf").innerText]];var gsMetaTagsKeys=["citation_author","citation_title","citation_journal_title","citation_publication_date","citation_pdf_url"];
function createGsMetaTags(gsMetaTagsKeys,gsMetaTags){var gsMetaFirst=document.createElement("meta");gsMetaFirst.setAttribute("name","gs_meta_revision");gsMetaFirst.setAttribute("content","1.1");document.head.append(gsMetaFirst);for(var cM=0;cM<gsMetaTags.length;cM++){var gsMeta=document.createElement("meta");gsMeta.setAttribute("name",gsMetaTagsKeys[cM]);gsMeta.setAttribute("content",gsMetaTags[cM]);document.head.append(gsMeta)}}createGsMetaTags(gsMetaTagsKeys,gsMetaTags);
</script>

Save your post. Now, if Google crawls your post, it will automatically be directed to the Google Scholar Bot for crawling. To see Google Scholar meta tags in your posts, right-click your post and select Inspect. You can see it is inside the Head tag.

That's how to index Blogger on Google Scholar. May be useful.