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.
Meta descriptions for subpages in the SERPs
-
Hey Mozzers!
Something occurred to me the other day was that, while we can write title tags and meta descriptions to be within the character count and therefore appear nice and neatly in the SERPs, when Google et al decide to pull subpages out as further site links, it seems to still pull the normal meta description but with a far lower character count. As this looks untidy and could potentially impact CTR, is there a way I can amend the preferred text for the shortened version, via Webmaster Tools, for example?
Thanks in advance for your help!
Nick.
-
Hi Nick,
I believe there is no longer a "character count", but more a space or pixel limit - http://www.seomofo.com/experiments/serp/snippet-ascii-art.html
This has been played out by a few people's experiments, so looks fairly solid - the limit relates to space, not character count. You could certainly try to create something that looked good both as a regular result and a sitelink.
-
Thanks guys. I thought that may be the case as all the ones I've seen have been cut. Is there even a set character count, as I could potentially write one that would at least look neat if cut early? Or does it depend from search to search?
As you say, this seems like something they maybe should look at, because while you would undoubtedly lose real estate by cutting all meta descs, you also lose a chunk by having your call to action cut, often in nonsensical or messy ways (I'm aware that this can happen anyway, but anything we can do to minimise this is always welcome!)
Thanks again!
-
Hi
Marty is correct there is no way of currently doing this, but I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't out soon, as they are always trying to get a better user experience for their users.
I will ask Google later this week and let you know what they happen to say, I will keep you updated as soon as I find out
-
Hi Nick,
Unfortunately at this time there isn't a way to specify a shorter meta description. The only way to achieve what you're looking for would be to shorten all meta descriptions for sub-pages but that means you'd lose a lot of real estate if it showed up in a normal SERP.
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
-
Prices Showing for products in SERPs - organic CTR reducing
Hi, I've been looking at a clients site and Google is pulling the prices of the products (for some not all) and the pages that rank have started to have a lower organic CTR. Does anyone know how I can control what prices show in the SERPs? There is no Schema on the site to display this and the price is not in the meta title or description - it's just appearing on some pages - it's not uniform across the site? Any ideas? Cheers B
On-Page Optimization | | Bush_JSM0 -
Review markup not showing up in SERP anymore
Hi all, I have been collecting reviews for a little while now. Ofcourse im hoping to cross the 150 reviews border soon 🙂 But i also added the review markup to my website to show up in organic results. This was working fine for a while. I did not added the markup to my homepage. But now for somehow google is not showing this review markup anymore in search results. So i decided to give the company that is hosting the review tool (google partner also) a call. The informed me that they had a lot of calls and e-mails since 2 weeks from their customers. All with the same problem that review markup is not used in search results anymore. Anyone else had this, or know about this issue?
On-Page Optimization | | J05B0 -
Can we change Title and/or Descriptions Dynamically Based on Search Query
If I recall we used to be able to change our title attributes tag dynamically based on the search query but not sure if it's possible now or if it makes sense to do so. Thoughts? Rosemary
On-Page Optimization | | RosemaryB1 -
Why is Google replacing my meta title with the business name on home page?
For all queries that return the home page, Google is not showing my meta title. Instead it replaced it with the official business name which of course makes it harder to rank for key terms since they don't exist now in the meta title. You can see this is you search on "mt view estate planning attorney". The site in question is dureelaw.com and the title showing is "The Law Office of Daniel L. DuRee." View the source and you'll see my meta title. Why is Google substituting it?
On-Page Optimization | | katandmouse0 -
Can I add multi location business cities to homepage meta title or desc.?
I have a business with 6 locations (in the same state) but very different cities. We we expanded from one location with the city name in the URL we followed best practices to move to the new domain without the singular city name in the URL. We definitly took a hit on the organic side and I'm trying to figure out best practice for where to add geo info. Currently I have geo info: -In footer
On-Page Optimization | | beehiive
-Contact Page -On local page It's a WP site and each location has it's own page (ie. locations/geolocation_keyword). I know all other locations will take sometime but my concern is the hit we took on the original location that had geo-target URL. I guess really my question is simply can I include city names in homepage meta title and desc.?
and is there anything else I can do to bounce back organically on the original city faster?0 -
Deindexing Archive Subpages?
I am using Yoast Wordpress SEO and I have clicked on the option to deindex archive subpages. However, I have over 200 duplicate title tag errors in Google Webmasters and most are due to subpages. I am using the URL removal tool but I am going to create several pages every day which is just going to cause more duplicate title tag errors. I don't understand why the Wordpress SEO settings are not working. How can I get google to stop indexing archive subpages? My site tanked BIG TIME about a week ago. Every day it is worse. From 320 clicks a day to 30. Any help would be appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | 2bloggers0 -
Ecommerce On-Site SEO: Keywords in Category Descriptions
Hello, I'm doing on-site SEO for a client's ecommerce site. Are 160 words enough for a category description? I'm using the keywords once at the top of the description, and once at the bottom of the description, with the ones at the bottom reworded so that they are the keywords with a different word order. I used to put the keywords in 3 times but it just feels like stuffing. Is twice, worded differently the second time, enough for a category description? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Is it ok to use encoded special characters in meta titles?
I've read blog posts stating that encoding special characters in title tags is both ok and not ok. Any definitive answer out there? Do the extra characters from adding encoding count towards the total number of characters that Google displays in SERPs? Or do they just count as one character?
On-Page Optimization | | BostonWright0