Meta Description issue only for products

Question

I have a serious problem with meta tag Description only for a product page. In head.phtml this tag is defined as follows:

<meta name="description" content="<?php echo htmlspecialchars($this->getDescription()) ?>" />

As you can see this is a Magento issue for long time, for product page it should be set to Short Description not Description. Why? Because in my case Description is an list of items. All tags like ul or li will be formated to <li> and this will be an ugly looking description ruining the page in Google. If I will use Short Description all the other pages will be affected, pages like CMS, Categories which are based on description attribute.

How can I change this meta tag only product page to use Short Description? It should be an if statement but I don't know who to define.

Answer 1

First of all,description and short_description are html support fields.

As per as, meta_description has been taken from meta_description field,* if meta_description field does have any value* then magento product page title take from description field,

**For your case,may be you does not set value at meta_description,so suggestion to update the meta_description of product for meta_description purpose**