Meta description of homepage, changing to latest post
-
Here's something strange I noticed. The meta description for Engadget when doing a Google search is their latest blog entry.
However, if you land on the homepage and view source the page, the meta description is a standard one for their homepage.
My first impressions : Wha? How? and Wha?
Could it be because it is a "news" site, Google goes "go on, have custom meta descriptions of your latest entry.."
Thoughts?
-
Woops, so it does. Must have mis-typed when Ctrl+F'ing
-
Hmm, see I see the meta description defined in the source
name="description" content=“Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics”/>
I know Google will generate the meta description on its own if no description is provided and Google at times will display a different meta description and titles if the data provided isn't more suitable (Experiencing this on one of my pages)
But it's strange for a defined description that relates to the homepage, this is happening.
-
Well, first of all the meta description is only a suggestion to Google of what to put in the text underneath your SERP. It's by no means an order.
Second, if you jump into the source on the Engadget homepage, it doesn't actually have any meta description code. So there's nothing there to suggest to Google what to have show up in the SERPs.
So, how does Google work out what to whack in there? Well, in the same way that sometimes Google decides what would be the best title tag for the user, it can work out what would be the best thing to display.
Currently, I'm seeing this description:
"Nokia's Q4 2012. From somewhere atop a Finnish mountain, Stephen Elop is both bellowing and whispering Nokia's fourth quarter and full-year financials."
This is the combination of the third article's image alt tag and the first line of the article on the page. With it being the third article, it is probably the last time Google crawled the page and updated it's SERP display accordingly. So, Google is pulling the alt text of the image and the first sentence of the article it has seen.
Now it's worked out nicely in this case, but it may not be so smooth for other articles. I imagine Engadget have this in mind when producing them.
If anything, shows you how useful alt text can be for images. It's not a solution for everyone and unsure what the SEO ramifications would be (wouldn't be anything too major, I'd suspect). But very interesting to see, thanks for pointing it out!
-
It is the same on the mobile section too http://www.engadget.com/topics/mobile/
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
-
How does Google treat significant content changes to web pages and how should I flag them as such?
I have several pages (~30) that I have plans to overhaul. The URLs will be identical and the theme of the content will be the same (still talking about the same widgets, using the same language) but I will be adding a lot more useful information for users, specifically including things that I think will help with my fairly high bounce rate on these pages. I believe the changes will be significant enough for Google to notice, I was wondering if it goes "this is basically a new page now, I will treat it as such and rank accordingly" or does it go "well this content was rubbish last time I checked so it is probably still not great". My second question is, is there a way I can get Google to specifically crawl a page it already knows about with fresh eyes? I know in the Search Console I can ask Google to index new pages, and I've experimented with if I can ask it to crawl a page I know Google knows (it allows me to) but I couldn't see any evidence of it doing anything with that index. Some background The reason I'm doing this is because I noticed when these pages first ranked, they did very well (almost all first / second page for the terms I wanted). After about two weeks I've noticed them sliding down. It doesn't look like the competition is getting any better so my running theory is they ranked well to begin with because they are well linked internally and the content is good/relevant and one of the main things negatively impacting me (that google couldn't know at the time) is bounce rate.
Search Behavior | | tosbourn0 -
Blog Post SEO - Bounce Rate & Layout
Mozzers, I wrote the following blog post about Microsoft’s current offer to receive $100 free in bing ads. http://www.cildermansolutions.com/blog/free-bing-ads-coupon-for-2017-get-100-in-free-advertising-credits I noticed that the bounce rate on the post is higher than i was expecting; I am wondering if this is because I put the eligibility rules for collecting the ads coupon in the 2nd paragraph...and people are just seeing that right away and bouncing. I obviously don’t want to lie or trick readers, but i am wondering if the community has any idea/suggestions. Thanks, Matt
Search Behavior | | matt.nails0 -
Product Descriptions for eCommerce - Paragraphs or Bullet Points (or both)?
Hey all, We've seen quite a large recent increase in traffic on our site (we sell travel experiences such as tours, tickets to theme parks etc.) but not much in the way of increased conversions as a result, so we are looking into further ways to optimise conversions. I'd like to know what thoughts people have on making product descriptions either bullet points or paragraphs, or some combination of both. We currently have paragraphs of information not just to explain the product but for on-page SEO purposes as well which seems to work well for drawing people to the site, and we have information further down the page on inclusions/exclusions etc. but it is well "below the fold". Do you think it's worth moving at least the "highlights" of the product up to the top of the page so that customers can instantly see what's on offer "at a glance"? Any answers or research people can direct me to would be greatly appreciated, cheers.
Search Behavior | | ExperienceOz0 -
How long til meta robots noindex takes effect?
I have a wordpress site with about 3,000 posts and over 1,000 tags. All of the tag archives are currently indexed in Google and I don't want them to be. I just set the meta robots to no-index all the tag archives and was wondering how long it will take til they're out of the search engines? Since there are close to 1,500 of these and they are duplicate content it would be nice to have them gone asap. I noticed Webmaster Tools allows me to resubmit my site to index if my site has changed significantly... should I try that?? Any other advice would be greatly appreciated!
Search Behavior | | gfreeman230 -
Recovering from a Hack: How long until Google reindexes changes?
In a previous post I made, I was able to determine that one of my sites; http://pokeronamac.com/ was hacked and was feeding spam perscription drug content to search engines, then redirecting to another site when clicked on Google. I then contacted my web host, and, after they did a scan of our files, they determined that something within the wp-includes directory was compromised and malicious. They removed the file, though they weren't able to determine the source of the attack, or how they god in (should we be scared?). Anyway, its been several days now ~5 and if I do a site search the spam pages still show up, but the redirect is no longer working. At this point, I am at a standstill, because i'm loosing traffic on my site by about 90%, and google hasn't sent us any warnings of malaware or the like. I know I was recommended against this before, but should I attempt to submit a reconsideration request, or should I just wait it out? Thanks for your help, Zach
Search Behavior | | Zachary_Russell0 -
SERPs changing on an hourly basis
Hi Mozzers, Can anyone help me please. I have a client that is ranking in position 2 for his major keyword in G.co.uk. He's been moving up but over the last 7 - 10 days he's moved down, then back up and around and around the front page which we all know can happen. The thing is - this is changing through the day 4 or 5 times in some cases. I've checked when the first page of the SERPs have been indexed via the cached button and normally Google hasn't crawled the competition or my guys site on the given day the changes happen, yet he's been 2, 5 and 7 and back to 2 in about 3 hours. Are these social signals do you think? whats going on - any ideas? Cheers Bush
Search Behavior | | Bush_JSM0 -
Homepage redirect dilemma, need some advice!
Our site is built to show users things to do around their current location. For this reason we redirect users to a city specific home page based on their location. To do this we detect users IP address and 302 redirect them to the closest city with events. Our site is below and you should be able to see the 302 redirect. fyifly.com My concern is that I always here not to use 302 redirects as they don't pass link juice through. I don't think 301 redirect would be good either as it is not a permanent redirect. Any advice on how you think the best way to treat this would be great or if you think the 302 direct is the best solution.
Search Behavior | | lsujoe0 -
Studies on influence of meta description on CTR
After having answered quite a lot of questions here, I figured it was about time to ask one of my own. Can anybody point me to decent (experimental) research articles or blogs that actually show variations in meta descriptions influence the Click Through Rate (CTR) of searchers? On dozens of websites on the internet it is stated that 'meta descriptions affect CTR', but (good scientific) sources for those statements are nowhere to be found. The only research I can find that comes closest to providing any evidence is a translated study by dynamical.biz, which states that searchers LOOK a lot at the meta description, but this study (atleast in the translation) mentions nothing of searchers actually CLICKING it. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Search Behavior | | Theo-NL0