I've seen some frustration in Q&A lately with how Google is handling search snippets and META descriptions. You may have seen a schizophrenic search result that looked something like this:
Site owners are understandably frustrated when they see the META descriptions they've labored over get carelessly tossed aside. So, where do snippets come from, and is there anything you can do to stay in control?
Search Snippet Basics
Typically, search snippets come from 1 of 3 places (and we’re just talking basic snippets here, not rich snippets like sitelinks):
- META descriptions
- On-page copy
- Open Directory Project (ODP) data
In the example above, Google is using my query ("January 11") and pulling up page content that the algorithm thinks is relevant. Since that copy is really just dates and fragments, I end up with a strange mash-up of on-page copy.
Controlling Search Snippets
So, is there anything you can do to bend Google to your will and always use your META descriptions? Unfortunately, the short answer is "no". Like so much of SEO, though, there are some ways to nudge Google in the right direction:
1. Focus Your META Description
Let's say that, for some reason, we really wanted that SEOmoz blog post to rank for "January 19". One solution is to make sure that phrase appears in our META description for the relevant page. If Google can find the matching copy in your description, they're more likely to use the tag as is. It's also just a good exercise – figuring out what your core target keywords are and targeting them naturally in your META description (don't just make it a list of keywords, of course) will help you focus your overall on-page SEO efforts.
2. Remove Duplicate METAs
In some cases, having too many pages with duplicate TITLE tags or META descriptions can lead Google to rank the wrong page or filter that META description. De-duplicating your TITLEs and META descriptions is a good practice anyway, but making sure that each page has its own unique and relevant description can also help insure that Google sees value in those descriptions.
3. Block Your ODP Listing
If you suspect that your search snippet is coming from the Open Directory Project (this would be more common on the home-page than deeper pages and long-tail queries), you can block Google from using your ODP listing with the following META tag:
<meta name="robots" content="NOODP">
This problem isn't quite as common as it used to be, but it does still pop up from time to time.
4. Block Your Snippet (Caution)
There's another, much more severe META tag you can use to block your snippet entirely:
<meta name="robots" content="nosnippet">
This directive will remove your snippet ENTIRELY, though, so use it with caution. It can also effect caching. In general, I'd only use this option if Google is taking liberties with snippets that could harm your brand or cause legal problems. Typically, these issues would be better dealt with in your on-page content directly.
5. Leave It Alone
Google's attempts to match snippets to queries don't always work the way you'd like, but in general they're a good thing. Matching, bolded keywords drive click-throughs, and people rarely read the whole text of a snippet. If it’s just a couple of long-tail queries, don't worry about it.
I would like to share one little tip here. If you want Google to use your meta description then frame your description in such a way that it includes your primary keyword in the very begining or as early as possible. This tactic works most of the time.
Priority keyword placement in the TITLE, URL, and META description can still pack a lot of punch, definitely.
Hey SEO- Himanhu, I totally agree. It is worth to put your keywords at the begining of your description so a different snippet will not be generated. Also, very often I use highly searchable and correlated with the subject keywords within meta descriptions. For example when I wrote an article where I compare Baidu vs Google, I used word "China" in the description as poeple search for "google china" or "baidu china". In this way the meta description will stay untouched, every time when someone types a combination of those keywords. What about those titles though? Google started changing them when I used a name of my blog. The name is added at the end of each title, but again the descriptions stay the same... Have you noticed that?
Great points, Dr. Pete. It's important for people to remember, as you pointed out, that Google will use your search query to populate the description with what it thinks is relevant. So different search queries will pull different descriptions into Google results for the same URL. So what you see isn't what every searcher sees for every query.
(And I also see them do this with title tags. Now THAT's frustrating!)
I've only seen the title tag swapping happen when you search for a big branded term, and even then only to the brand owner's site (EDIT: except in the ODP/Yahoo cases noted below), so it shouldn't be that bad as far as CTR or anything else (it might even help in some cases). If you've seen it happen somewhere else , though, I'd be interested to know.
Also, I'm not sure DMOZ even exists anymore. I see MANY pages with the last update in 2007, thousands of categories with no editors (they don't seem responsive on volunteer applications), abuses of the terms (redirects, spammy sites that purchased the domain, etc.), and so on.
To illustrate how run-down DMOZ is, choose a REALLY broad term, then search site:dmoz.org (term) -"search?q=" (new user search queries are always being indexed). "Internet?" Not one category updated in English in the last month. "Home?" Just a bunch of newly indexed error pages. Correct me if I'm wrong, but DMOZ looks dead to me.
Agree... and populating tons of so called SEO Directories (when we talk about "content farm")
We're seeing Google messing with TITLE tags, too. As Keenan mentioned, it often seems brand related, but it's hard to tell just yet. I think this tendency to take liberties with snippets is only going to increase.
Good post Pete, short and to the point. Always good to have these pieces of information in your back pocket just incase it comes up on your site someday.
Could you please explain why Google shows "title" other than what I have on my home page? I have placed NOODP,NOYDIR tags on all the pages of my website.
Unfortunately, Google is starting to take more liberties with titles as well, especially when the query doesn't match the title well or for some navigational/brand searches. There's not tag or on-page element that will stop them from doing it. If your title is very long, you could shorten it (that's often a culprit). You may also want to see what queries Google is changing it for and then consider whether any of those keywords belong in your title.
As things currently stand I would always suggest including a well focused description for each and every page.
Although, Google's Matt Cutts agreed, way back last year, that it is no longer, if ever was, used by their search algorithm he also addressed the question in the title of this post.
He confirmed that where the entered description is deemed the most relevant, and that includes having the searched for terms, it is more likely to be used below the title as against the algo selecting multiple snippet bits for display which in some cases, as highlighted, can be less than helpful.
To test the theory run a small experiment on a client site home page which by its nature has more than one keyword theme. Created a fairly highly targeted description with 4 separate sections relating to different product ranges (each with about the requisite character count of 155).
Interestingly, when different combinations of keywords were searched for different descriptions were also displayed. The full post entitled Using description tag creatively to boost conversion shows the process with results.
Thanks, Rob - good stuff, and very interesting tactic from Jill discussed in your link.
Man what a great method to overcome this. I will try it tmr. Thanks
Carefully written meta descriptions are critical to optimizing your CTR and seeing Google ignore them can be pretty frustrating. Thankfully there are good ways to avoid/remedy this problem. Granted this post is just about Google, but it may help someone to point out that for yahoo and the yahoo directory it's <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOYDIR"> to avoid yahoo directory titles and descriptions.
I hesitated a bit to mention NOYDIR because I'm honestly not sure how the Yahoo Directory data and the tag are being used since the Yahoo/Bing integration. If anyone has some concrete data (or even an anecdote) on that, I'd love to hear it.
At the end of the day, Google is selecting the best snippet possible. If your meta isn't showing, you need to ask yourself how you can improve it. However, also bare in mind that you can't possibly foresee every possible search query that is to be made to find your site so you have to accept that the odds are your data wil not always show - so don't worry!
Yeah...very true, the last option as Dr Pete also mentioned "5. Leave It Alone"...let Google decide and we should concentrate on other things to improve site performance:-)
I've occasionally joked that 50% of my Q&A responses boil down to "Dear God, don't do it!!" and the other 50% to "Dude, relax." Sometimes, we need to stop trying to optimize every last thing.
Some people collect email id from Google search using DIGDB tool.and send lots of bulk promotional Email using Free Email ID providers Like G-Mail, Yahoo etc...Its how many beneficial for lead generation. and its good for seo on-page because Google take email id from meta description. we can improved our CTR throw meta description. so if we write contact number and email id in meta description so can we generate more CTR
Dr Pete, I think all your points are great, but I really like #5 the most... it's easy to get overly obsessed on this stuff, and sometimes a few rare queries are best left alone, and not worry about too much!
You can't make a description perfect for everything, so write a good one and walk away
This phenomenon can be quite frustrating to an SEO where the client doesn't quite understand the number of variables in the algorithm's and thinks that what they have decided i.e. the meta tag contents are set in stone. I find it hard to try and explain that search engines are not straight-down-the-line beasts and will do what they see fit, regardless of how hard you try. As someone else has said somewhere on here, you can only do your best to guide Google et al down the path you want them to go. This in my opinion is one of the things that makes SEO so absolutely fascinating and frustrating at the same time!
It's especially frustrating when that client thinks you're "doing it wrong" or talks to some other (not so honest) SEO who claims they can fix it. Sometimes, we just can't control what Google does. Of course, that shouldn't be an excuse, and we have to find another path to our goals, but it isn't always the path we started on.
I have found in some instances that I have done some optimisation where the client hasn't seen immediate results (as I warned him) and as you say, they then get approached by a less than 'white-hat' SEO who goes down the paid links and hidden content route only to be rewarded with better results. It does make me angry that I try to maintain an honest, best practise approach to things and as you say we get told that it hasn't worked. Speaking to other SEO's there's a general consensus that black-hat tactics will be weeded out and penalised eventually but in the short-term it seems that the good guys finish last sometimes.
Pro Tip: The meta description snippet usage is one of the few places where Google actually cares about keyword density. It won't help you rank, but if you really want Gogle to use your snippet (for example to make sure you get your Phone Number in there), try to make sure you use the primary keyword for which you would like to rank TWICE in the same sentence...
Example: You sell blue widgets and rank #3 for Blue Widgets, but Google won't use your meta description. Change it to something like this.
Call the Blue Widget Experts at MyCompany (555-555-5555) for the Best Deals on Blue Widgets.
Google will eat it up.
I dream of of world where you can write more than 1 meta description for your pages, and google picks the one that is most relevant.
Don't know if we can post links here, but to ensure our Description looks perfect in the SERPs, we use this great free tool https://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html
One of those amazing little tools that give you über control on the serps. It enables us to have the right words at the right place!
We can position any word we want at the start of both lines on the Description (or at the end)... imagine what you can do with it...
If you have time, read the SeoMofo blog,he does not post very often, but when he does, he's outrageously hillarious!
Yes you can if it is adding value... and the SEOMofo tool for snippets is surely a must to use one.
Darren's snippet tool is definitely useful. I should note that it doesn't emulate all of Google's odd behavior, but I think there's a lot to be gained from just being mindful of Google's length guidelines and building a solid search snippet that's attractive to visitors. We get so tied up in the SEO aspects, that we forget that ranking is pretty useless without click-through.
You know what bothers me is that Google has taken it upon itself to rewrite title tags and to add title tag information that in some cases is not only irrelevant but libelous.
Very actionable post Peter.
And very useful as Casey said in his comment.
Meta Description is probably one of most important meta tags when it comes to pure Online Marketing, as it is our first (and therefore crucial) Call to Action. That is why it is important to be able to control the snippet output the most we can.
But the best lesson your post gives me is: when you loose yourself in advanced SEO experiments, do not forget the basic issues, because summed they mean the highest % of the On Page optimization.
A good keep It Short And Simple Post focusing one simple SEO aspect.
In our case even after using the block ODP tag <meta name="robots" content="NOODP"> The description snippet is ok but Google is not displaying the given title tag . It display the name of the company.
Any suggestions?
Try to add a shorter title, that helped in our case.
Thanks for the suggestion. Shall try this.
Pete,
I went to Traits (Most) Good Web Developers Have
And found the reason why Google would choose a snippet.
Here is your meta description:
<meta name="description" content="As a follow up to Matt's How to Hire a Good
Web Developer article, I thought I would expand on the subject a little
more and discuss common traits good web developers have.
These are things I've noticed in working with or talking to web
developers at all skill levels -- from someone who still uses Front Page
all the way to Google emp..." />
The description tag is a description of the content on the page, not a sales
pitch or a comment.
The ideal would be
<meta name="description" content="Traits (Most) Good Web Developers Have"/>
In this particular case, I think we did take a section of the post, ending up with a META description that was a bit unwieldy. I've definitely seen Google rewriting more often, though, and in situations where descriptions are relatively short and well-written. They often try to re-write to match the query (if the query keywords aren't in the defined META description), but that can lead to some strange results.
There's no issue with longer descriptions. Your "ideal" example would be a page title, not a META description, and would honestly be repetitive and of very little value to search users. A description is really meant to be a summary.
I think this Google's approach is a messy one. I SEO for a few other languages, and boy all of the snippet results are now very ugly and confusing. Only titles make sense. Or May be Google's getting ahead of itself thinking its algorithm is smart enough but it isn't. They might need to stop thinking less like engineers. I would say I know SEO and now I don't know what to do because I hate to see descriptions snippet messed up like this, I can't even imagine for people who just own great useful web sites and know nothing about SEO. Also, Google search results in many asian languages are now getting worst too.
I just realized that Google pulls different meta-descriptions depending on your search terms. So searching for Commerce Kitchen Denver pulls up one snippet for our homepage (pulling from our on-page content), but searching for Denver SEO Commerce Kitchen pulls up another entirely (pulling from our meta-description). Fascinating!
Hello everyone.. Now I think Google is showing the DMOZ meta description with website description...
I am having this problem with my site but it is only 3 weeks old
Thank you for sharing all this good information. What is bothering me the most is that my problem is a little different from what most people reported here. I used to have google displaying the description tag that I carefully made, but now it doesn't show anything! Not even random page sections referring to the search queries. Basically it just shows my title tag and link. This is terrible for business.
If you're not blocking the snippet (such as with a NOSNIPPET directive), this could mean that you've got a duplicate content issue or there's a crawl issue with the page. You might want to make sure Google is able to crawl the page properly (you can check the page specifically with Google Webmaster Tools to start).
hi
which tag should we use?
<meta name="robots" content="NOODP"> or <meta name="robots" content="NOODP" />
i used NOODP" /> and still i can see that Google is using meta description from DMOZ.. How can i tell google to switch to the original description?
Technically, the /> version is more standards compliant, but both are fine. If Google's not honoring it, then I'm afraid it's more complicated. Unfortunately, there's not a lot you can do at that point.
Can you help me with this issue:
In the browser what I can see is : ( Epharmarx: Generic Viagra 100mg | Generic Viagra | Cheap Viagra )
and my real meta tag is ( Generic Viagra 100mg | Generic Viagra | Cheap Viagra Online- Epharmarx )
I am not able to find the correct answer.
It's so frustrating.
I am also having the same problem .....Google is not showing the description what I written, but in my site webmaster didn't show any duplicate title tags and meta tags.
Kindly help me
Thanks..
Shiv
In order to block your snippet interely I always use phrases which are already in the content of the page. Google can read my meta descritpion or the content from pages- that's the same thing so I win anyway. Whether you don't use Serp google will use your content. But if to be a little tricky you can use a short content and in this content to add more keywords than on the page. I works definitely.
Thanks for the article and useful info!
I have the same problems with my snippets On My Website MoneyMakerStartups but i tried using <meta name="robots" content="NOODP"> i hope its working now i will have to wait few hrs or days to check again or it works ... Thank you for this beautiful Information.
[Link removed by editor.]
I just noticed something very irritating...
Google is drawing the description from my latest instagram post (I just included an instagram widget in my site and it looked cool... but now I'll have to remove it)... expected Google to be smarter...
I am using Wordpress to build one of my Websites and I am also using Yoast SEO plugin to optimize my posts however Google seems to ignore the meta descriptions and even the custom page titles I have specified. Instead Google uses random extracts from each page and use them as meta descriptions. this is really annoying since I could no find a way to force my custom descriptions and titles.
Google is doing this with our page here: https://www.crystalball.tv/vehicle-tracking. When you search Google.co.uk for the term "vehicle tracking" I have no idea what is wrong with the Meta Description we have wrote. It meets all of the recommendations I've read about. The scraped version that Google has used is repetitive and is probably negatively affecting our click-through as a result. Is there anything else we can do to force/push them to us the one we created?
p.s. I have already requested a re-crawl via GWT
Thanks a lot for some valuable info. I have a draft of a relative post on my own website, and I'll definitely link back to this post on SeoMoz.
Here is Matt Cutts take on the subject
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueyrb1PhULg
I have seen the same thing on my site with both the Title and description. On one particular page of my site the title changes dependant upon the search query enetered into Google. I havent been able to change it yet, to ensure that the title displays how I have specified in the meta, but I will certainly try out a few of the techniques in this post to see if it has an effect. Has anyone found that one method works better than another?
Nice Post. Google is changing meta tags for my websites frequently and many time I am surprised to see the results but can not do any thing. Recently my website https://www.jetairways-konnect.com was on 5th position on first page of Google search and it is crawled again on 22nd Jan and now it is no where?.
Unfortunately, if the snippet changes come along with a ranking drop, it could be something a bit more complicated, like caching issues, massive duplicates or even a page-specific penalty. Sometimes, Google is replacing one page in the rankings for Keyword X with a completely different page, for example.
We had that case twice last year and could solve that easily with blocking the OPD listing. I even was confronted lately with that case the the title of the snippet came from the OPD listing (I never heard about that case before). Same stretegy here and the title on the website has been a too long as well, which has been replaces by a shorter one.
I had a client with a title grabbed from the ODP listing just this week. Instead of {keyword rich title tag} as the google listing title for their home page it was {company name}. Unfortunately making it even worse was that it was the name of a former company who owned the site and registered in DMOZ. NOODP meta tag was the solution.
Oh to have snippets you can control!
great post and for those looking for answers, they will find what they need here - I must be honest, I never thought of blocking ODP listings, but it is definitely something to look at.
Andy
Unfortunately I had faced this problem for my site's, it started 4-5 months ago, where Google of instead showing my well-written description was picking the blog dates, author name and some odd text which I didn't wanted to show at SERP's. As you mentioned I had implemented Point 1,2 & 3 except Blocking the Snippet...but there was no change.
Later I tried limiting my description tag length for few selected page's to see does it work or not. I re-tweaked description length below 180 characters whereby placing my targeted keywords for that page at beginning and that worked for me.
From my practical experience I can say, if you limit description length shorter it will certainly work. However, you can't really take control on Google to show things how we want.
Thanks for your well detailed post :-)
Hey All,
Here's more information from "Official Google Webmaster Central Blog" on how to improve snippets with a meta description makeover. I am sure this post will answer most of our queries related to Dr Pete's article
https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-with-meta-description.html
Thanks :-)
Nice find - I think most SEO's would be following these rules anyway when optimising pages - I think it's when all of this is taken into account and the tags are super relevant but still display differently when the frustrations occur.
thanks Jammie :-) yeah it's frustrating sometimes, that's why I said you can't really take control on Google to show things how we want. You sometimes really feel helpless if things don't go our way and find clueless on what to do?
"...Google's attempts to match snippets to queries don't always work the way you'd like..."
Nice advice!You can't freak out about something you cant really control.I mean you need to know as much as you can about the wave (google's algorithm), but remembering you just ride (ranking pages) doing your best on results without controlling the wave.
Very informative post! I am a newbie SEO and really helped me out a lot!
Excellent post, had a case when the client was seeing weird meta title and description being used in search results and after reading your post i realized that i Google was using for some reason the dmoz listing details. At least know i know how this works! Duplicate description tags might have been the cause here, since it was an old system not tweaked to generate different description tag for each page.I guess it’s best to generate unique meta title and description for each page in a website. Recently i have tweaked my cms to do so, however there are still places where making titles and description becomes hard. e.g searching a product category, each page will basically have the same title and description apart from the page number, not sure if Google would consider this duplicate title, descriptions for having just a number change.
I have tested this a lot over the last 5-6 months and have fouind that in most cases leaving them out completely works perfectly fine. There are some instances, such as pages with little textual content, or pages I would prefer to have a stronger call to action for a specific keyword query that I still focus on them. About 95% of the time though it is not needed and a waste of time to consider. In many cases my CTR has actually improved or at least stayed relatively the same as google does a pretty good job of finding content around the search query to display in the snippet.
Another intersting thing Andrew Shotland pointed out over at localseoguide.com a couple months back here: https://www.localseoguide.com/google-instant-previews-choke-on-meta-description-tags/ is that it appears that with the relatively new instant preview section google seems to offer better call outs when you do not use the meta description. If instant preview becomes more widely used (I know a big IF at this point) it could lead to better CTR's. I guess only time will tell, but will be interesting to watch over the coming months for sure.
One minor issue I've seen with leaving them out is that some non-Google sites (like Facebook) use the META description when you post links. That's actually getting more common. It's not an SEO issue, per se, just more of a convenience issue.
Yeah, I've noticed that as well, but FB also allows you to write in what you want there as well whether it automatically pulls one in or not. Most of the people I know tend to do this anyway and add their own little message there to give it a personal touch. It is a good point though and something I will definitely consider going forward.
Thanks for sharing such a nice info. It is really very helpful. I agree that the length of the description should be kept short.
So for someone like me with little experience in SEO would you say just, NOT to mess with it?
You should always write a unique, CTA focused meta description for each of your pages. It's not that complicated to write one really, and get it implemented. I would suggest looking at this SEOMoz Article on the subject.
Oh, I absolutely think it's ok to start working on crafting good META descriptions. It's low risk, and while META descriptions carry little (or no) direct ranking power, they do help with duplicate content issues and the overall search experience. Like any META tag, you should be careful not to be too spammy or do anything really odd (like change them 10 times/day), but tactics (1) - (3) above are pretty safe.
Nice post. Going to force my new web developer to read this or maybe just sack him!
According to my experience, Google have no facility to make variation in Title tag during display. Google want to generate best result during each search query. I want to share one great example for it. Right now, I am approching to get higher rank with Office Chairs keyword. But, If some one will search High Back Office Chairs so, Google shows my home page with different snnipet. Mean, some section of content from my website. That content is really aggresive & motivate Google users to click on my result. Finally, I observed that, my CTR is incresing with this keyword & improving organic ranking without any stuff for this keyword. So, This is my mind bubble. BTW: Nice post!!
Mmm... I think you probably need to read better point 6 of the Recommendation for Blog Commenting as a Marketing Strategy by Rand, because you probably misunderstood it.
In order to prove better what you say in your comment, I would prefer that the link is actually to the SERPs you're talking about, not to your site.