Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why has Google removed meta descriptions from SERPS?
-
One of my clients' sites has just been redesigned with lots of new URLs added. So the 301 redirections have been put in place and most of the new URLs have now been indexed. BUT Google is still showing all the old URLs in the SERPS and even worse it only displays the title tag. The meta description is not shown, no rich snippet, no text, nothing below the title. This is proving disastrous as visitors are not clicking on a result with no description. I have to assume its got something to do with the redirection, but why is it not showing the descriptions?
I've checked the old URLs and he meta description is definitely still in the code, but Google is choosing not to show it. I've never seen this before so I'm struggling for an answer. I'd like to know why or how this is happening, and if it can be resolved.
I realise that this may be resolved when Google stops showing all the old URLs but there's no telling how long that will take (can it be speeded up?)
-
Yeah, the 301 should be taking effect, but apparently Google thinks that the 301 is more of a 302. We have seen Bing come out and say sometimes they will ignore commands and treat a 301 like a 302. Do you 301 things often?
Regardless, since there are no more links pointing to the /Lavender page, you can 404 or 410 that page and let it drop in the index. The new one should take it's place. You do risk losing traffic for a little time though, just be aware of that. Should fix the issue though.
-
But the 301 is still about a year old!
-
That's right: I updated the internal links a little over a month ago & the other stuff was during the last 3 weeks, with the last changes over a week ago now.
-
When did you change the links on your site and the backlinks? I ask because OpenSiteExplorer still sees them which tells me it was in the last few months I think. Is that right?
-
Howdy!
We're having the same issue with an important url. About a year ago, I slapped a 301 from
http://www.ashridgetrees.co.uk/Lavender
to
http://www.ashridgetrees.co.uk/Lavender-Plants
I've updated all the links on our site that pointed to the old URL and even managed to update some external backlinks. I've also built a new backlink from a respected, relevant site to the new URL, as well as tweeted & facebooked at it. Finally, I've updated our sitemap.
Despite all of this and the amount of time that's passed, the old url is still in the serps. We have a good crawl rate and whenever we make a new page, even one that's quite deep in the site with no direct access from the main navigation, it's in the SERPs in less than a week.
Any ideas?
Our company is Ashridge Trees
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=lavender+plants&pws=0&hl=en&num=10
Thanks!
-
Can you give us an example of a SERP result?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Meta name Author
Hello! I have a problem. I'm using Rank Math for WordPress. But I can’t configure a basic thing such as <meta name="author" content="" />. I had to insert this code manually using the hook. Does anyone know a normal way to do this markup? Example page: https://b-shoes.com/foot-shaped-shoes/ Thank you!
Technical SEO | | WayneM.0 -
How to remove Parameters from Google Search Console?
Hi All, Following are parameter configuration in search console - Parameters - fl
Technical SEO | | adamjack
Does this parameter change page content seen by the user? - Yes, Changes, reorders, or narrows page content.
How does this parameter affect page content? - Narrow
Which URLs with this parameter should Googlebot crawl? - Let Googlebot decide (Default) Query - Actually it is filter parameter. I have already set canonical on filter page. Now I am doing tracking of filter pages via data layer and tag manager so in google analytic I am not able to see filter url's because of this parameter. So I want to delete this parameter. Can anyone please help me? Thanks!0 -
Phone Number In Meta Description
People are more likely to call us, than email us. However, if they're using a mobile device, there's a click to call button on that site. My question is this: google does not include our phone number in our meta description. I could try to get the description changed, but it doesn't seem like it would make that big of a deal for just the desktop site. Am I missing something about the importance of the phone number on a desktop site? Any experience with this situation? Thanks, Ruben
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup3 -
Meta Description VS Rich Snippets
Hello everyone, I have one question: there is a way to tell Google to take the meta description for the search results instead of the rich snippets? I already read some posts here in moz, but no answer was found. In the post was said that if you have keywords in the meta google may take this information instead, but it's not like this as i have keywords in the meta tags. The fact is that, in this way, the descriptions are not compelling at all, as they were intended to be. If it's not worth for ranking, so why google does not allow at least to have it's own website descriptions in their search results? I undestand that spam issues may be an answer, but in this way it penalizes also not spammy websites that may convert more if with a much more compelling description than the snippets. What do you think? and there is any way to fix this problem? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | socialengaged
Eugenio0 -
Google is indexing my directories
I'm sure this has been asked before, but I was looking at all of Google's results for my site and I found dozens of results for directories such as: Index of /scouting/blog/wp-includes/js/swfupload/plugins Obviously I don't want those indexed. How do I prevent Google from indexing those? Also, it only seems to be doing it with Wordpress, not any of the directories on my main site. (We have a wordpress blog, which is only a portion of the site)
Technical SEO | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Tags showing up in Google
Yesterday a user pointed out to me that Tags were being indexed in Google search results and that was not a good idea. I went into my Yoast settings and checked the "nofollow, index" in my Taxanomies, but when checking the source code for no follow, I found nothing. So instead, I went into the robot.txt and disallowed /tag/ Is that ok? or is that a bad idea? The site is The Tech Block for anyone interested in looking.
Technical SEO | | ttb0 -
How to remove a sub domain from Google Index!
Hello, I have a website having many subdomains having same copy of content i think its harming my SEO for that site since abc and xyz sub domains do have same contents. Thus i require to know i have already deleted required subdomain DNS RECORDS now how to have those pages removed from Google index as well ? The DNS Records no more exists for those subdomains already.
Technical SEO | | anand20100 -
Google Off/On Tags
I came across this article about telling google not to crawl a portion of a webpage, but I never hear anyone in the SEO community talk about them. http://perishablepress.com/press/2009/08/23/tell-google-to-not-index-certain-parts-of-your-page/ Does anyone use these and find them to be effective? If not, how do you suggest noindexing/canonicalizing a portion of a page to avoid duplicate content that shows up on multiple pages?
Technical SEO | | Hakkasan1