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!
Eugenio -
Typically if Google is choosing to show a snippet of content instead of your meta description then there is something they don't like about your meta description. For instance, it could be too short, too long, over-optimized, not formatted correctly, etc...
You can't force Google to use your meta description, but you can play around with rewriting meta tags to see if they end up liking one enough to use when someone searches for your primary keywords on that page.
Also use the No ODP tag if you aren't already.
-
Hello,
Thank you for reply. I highlighted some parts of the website, that's true.. I will try removing them and see if metas are taken into consideration.But this highlighting does not apply to all pages, and for many pages the first 2 lines of the pages are instead shown within the result. I understand I cannot tell Google what to show in their results
There is no other way then to let Google take my metas more into consideration? I thought that maybe to highlight the meta description only would be a solution. But there is no way to do so unless I put the meta description within the content of each page. Do you know any other solution?
Thanks anyway, your reply really helped !
-
Eugenio,
I don't think there's a way to tell Google what to show. However, if you are building your site in such a way that it has content markup (such as schema, microformats or using the highligh tool in WMT), you are basically telling Google that that is the best way to display the search results.
If you actually prefer to show the meta description (although it is impossible to force Google to do it), you should remove whatever markup you have in your site, then let Google just display what it wants (hopefully your meta description).
PS: the keywords tag isn't used by Google anymore, that's a useless tag you can safely removed. However, Bing said that they still use the keywords meta but it is just one of over 2000 ranking signals they use. So it's basically up to you use it /don't use it (you won't find a big site making use of the keywords meta anymore).
Hope that helped!
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 Description for ALL my Posts is Being Overwritten!
Every single one of my posts meta descriptions are being overritten with the same meta description! I use Yoast and have proper meta descriptions in my posts, but something seems to be overriding them. https://ibb.co/rcgWNXb Any idea what could be causing this? Thank you!!! Mike
Technical SEO | | naturalsociety1 -
Full Ecommerce vs seperate shop section
Just wondering is anyone had any thoughts on whats the easiest for SEO purposes. My main focus is to get people to buy our installation services. We could either a) Have a full ecommerce website and on every product we can advertise the fact that we install the products. As well as creatign additinal CMS pages OR b) Create a content driven site promoting our installation services and then having a separate tab at the top which can be very prominent called Shop or Buy online. The customer can then visit that page for DIY products. Would either option be a better option for SEO purposes/usability for the customer?
Technical SEO | | paulfoz16091 -
Missing meta descriptions from Google SERPs
Hullo all, I run an e-commerce website and hence have a lot of product category/sub-category pages to handle. Despite giving each of these category pages meta descriptions, in the Google SERPs, a lot of these descriptions don't show up fully. Rather, only half the text that I'd inputed as my meta desc. shows up; the other half has generic stuff from that page given. I've attached a screen shot to give you an example of what comes up in the SERPs. Could you please tell me what exactly is the problem? Is it a coding issue? Or has Google not crawled that page? Need help asap! Thank you in advance! aE9RKXJ
Technical SEO | | suchde0 -
Meta Description: How to Implement It?
I'm pretty new to SEO and am starting to implement the knowledge that I've learned into the websites that I'm working on. The websites have already been created but without Meta-descriptions. My problem is that when I try to implement a Meta Description it moves the whole website text and design. I am using Wordpress to manage and edit the sites. Any help would be great. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | amnistech1 -
Noindex vs. page removal - Panda recovery
I'm wondering whether there is a consensus within the SEO community as to whether noindexing pages vs. actually removing pages is different from Google Pandas perspective?Does noindexing pages have less value when removing poor quality content than physically removing ie. either 301ing or 404ing the page being removed and removing the links to it from the site? I presume that removing pages has a positive impact on the amount of link juice that gets to some of the remaining pages deeper into the site, but I also presume this doesn't have any direct impact on the Panda algorithm? Thanks very much in advance for your thoughts, and corrections on my assumptions 🙂
Technical SEO | | agencycentral0 -
Ror.xml vs sitemap.xml
Hey Mozzers, So I've been reading somethings lately and some are saying that the top search engines do not use ror.xml sitemap but focus just on the sitemap.xml. Is that true? Do you use ror? if so, for what purpose, products, "special articles", other uses? Can sitemap be sufficient for all of those? Thank you, Vadim
Technical SEO | | vijayvasu0 -
Backtracking from verification meta tag to the correct Google account is difficult
A Google verification meta tag was created and implemented on a site that I am now responsible for (I took over an SEO project after a long lapse), but no one seems to know what Google account was used to create the meta tag in the first place. I'm finding it very difficult to backtrack from verification meta tag to the Google account, and all the online help is for those having trouble moving forward with the verification. Any suggestions or advice?
Technical SEO | | MaryDoherty0 -
More products the same description but different properties
I am beginner in seo. I have development a website in prestashop. I have a problem: for more product i have the same description, but different properties: for example : http://www.icentrale.ro/45-centrale-termice-cu-tiraj-fortat-schimbator-secundar-ferroli-divatop-f-24.html and http://www.icentrale.ro/46-centrale-termice-cu-tiraj-fortat-schimbator-secundar-ferroli-divatop-f-32.html Only diffrent for this is the properties from table. Its posible to be penalized the google for duplicate content? A solution for this issue?
Technical SEO | | vilcu0