Meta descriptions for specific categories/tags not showing?
-
Hi -- I'm really confused as to why only certain blog categories are not able to be crawled for their descriptions when their source codes look identical to other, crawlable pages on the same site?
Specifically, Moz/other tools are not able to pull a meta description from the page http://www.koonz.com/category/videos/premises-liability-videos (and a few others) - while the source code looks almost identical to http://www.koonz.com/category/videos/federal-torts-claims-act-videos ??
Can anyone shed some light into possible issues for me? Thanks in advance!
-
That's odd. Is there a theme conflict? If I was you I'd want to understand root cause. You don't want future theme or plugin updates overriding your fix and putting you back in the same place.
-
Thank you for your answer, Donna! I actually believe it was a coding issue
Yoast was coding the descriptions as meta property="og:description" only. It looks like Moz and many other tools only consider meta name="description" as the proper code (even if og:description was included).
If anyone else is having a similar issue, what I had my team do is make sure to amend the autofilled snippets descriptions provided by Yoast (which they should have been doing anyways). Editing the autofilled descriptions adds the meta name="description" HTML needed. No more missing meta description errors!
-
Moz and other tools aren't able to pull the meta description? I can see the meta description when I view that page using the Moz toolbar. It also gets picked up when I scan the site using screaming frog.
Do you mean it's not displaying as expected in search results? If yes, that sometimes happens b/c Google chooses other content from the page to display if it thinks it's more relevant.
Oleg's observation is a valid one if only part of the meta description is getting picked up and displayed in search results. I've seen that many times. Here's what the Moz Meta Description resource page says about meta description limitations (about 3/4 of the way down the page):
"Quotes Cut Off Descriptions
Any time quotes are used in a meta description, Google cuts off the description. To prevent meta descriptions from being cut off, it's best to remove all non-alphanumeric characters from meta descriptions. If quotation marks are important in your meta description, you can change them to single quotes rather than double quotes to prevent truncation."
Also, if the meta description is too long (cutoff somewhere in the 150-160 character range), it will get truncated. Your specific example is 156 characters.
Does that help? If not, please elaborate and perhaps some different insights will be shared.
-
My guess is the apostrophe (') in the meta description that is causing the issue. Check out your other pages that don't have the meta description indexed.
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
-
Google Six Pack Meta Descriptions
Anyone know of some good resources on the way to control the meta descriptions in the Google six pack for a branded search. Google appears to often bypass the meta description and pull random text from the page. We have tested this by adding the brand name to the meta description and this appears to help but doesn't always sort the issue. You often get the same results with the site comand. It not really an SEO issue more a branding one. Anyone get any ideas or resources they can point me at?
Technical SEO | | highwayfive0 -
Is <title>different from <h1> and "meta tag title"?</title>
hi guys, new to MOZ and SEO. Basic question here. is <title>different from <h1> and "meta tag title"?</p> <p>I have lots of "title missing or blank" errors as reported by a recent Moz crawl. What do i need to add into the pages to clear these? an <h1>? an <title>? or <meta tag title>? </p> <p>Im running a volusion site, and from what ive read (negative & positive) Volusion can be a pain to optimize my SEO as i dont have full access to all my pages.?</p></title>
Technical SEO | | Jerrion0 -
Best practice to handle Wordpress Categories/Tags
Hello Mozzers, I am sure a lot of people here are using wordpress. How do you handle Categories & Tags? I came across that they produce a lot of duplicate content in the google index. My website is brand new so I don't have any traffic yet, how would you handle it? noindex, follow? Or block /categories/ and /tags/ from robots.txt? Probably I am completely wrong with both ways? I am grateful for your answers! Best regards!
Technical SEO | | grobro0 -
Meta keywords shown in Google SERPS as site description
I'm seeing Google display meta-keywords in the SERP description for some sites (at least a half dozen that I've checked). I BELIEVE IT IS AN AJAX ISSUE BECAUSE: The sites all use AJAX to display content. So the meta-keywords are in the header, and the javascript that displays the content. Non-AJAX parts of the site display properly in Google SERPS The meta-keywords don't visibly appear anywhere on the page. When I turn off images and Javascript in Chrome I don't see any hidden keyword text. I BELIEVE IT IS A GOOGLE-SPECIFIC ISSUE BECAUSE: Each site displays properly in Bing and Yahoo SERPS - the meta-description is the description. However, (as expected) I see the same strange meta-keyword activity in Aol search In Screaming Frog's SERP preview I see the meta-description as the description. Google has been ignoring met-keywords for years. Any idea why it's appearing in the SERPS for these AJAX powered sites? I found one other person who saw that Google may be reading and displaying their content in AJAX even though that content is meant to appear on a different "page". No one on that Google Forum seemed to understand the person's problem. The only reason I get it is because now I'm seeing it with my own eyes. I know the Moz community can do better, so i'm posting about it here.
Technical SEO | | AlexCobb0 -
Impact of changing title and description.
When a site doesn't rank for keywords, is this advisable to keep changing the title, description and other on page factors of a page , say home page, until it ranks? Will that impact on improvement? Or else will it be counted in the negative side?
Technical SEO | | Somanathan0 -
Meta Title Tags
Hi, Are Meta Title Tag deemed by google to be unique if I use the same phrases by in a different order. For example 3 different pages <colgroup><col width="475"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | Studio33
| Online Invoicing Software | Online Invoicing | Invoicing Software |
| Online Invoicing | Invoicing Software | Online Invoicing Software |
| Invoicing Software | Online Invoicing Software | Online Invoicing | You will not it is the same keywords just in a different order. Is this unique enough or will google not be happy about it. Thanks Andrew0 -
Wordpress categories causing too many links/duplicate content?
I've just added categories to my wordpress site and some of the posts show in several of the categories. Will this cause me duplicate content problems as I want the category pages to be indexed? Also as I add more categories I'm creating more links on the page. They can't be seen to the user as I have a plugin that creates drop down categories. When I go to 'view source' though all the links are there so google will see lots of links. How can I fix the too many links problem? And should I worry about duplicate content issue?
Technical SEO | | SamCUK1 -
Warnings for blocked by blocked by meta-robots/meta robots Nofollow...how to resolve?
Hello, I see hundreds of notices for blocked by meta-robots/meta robots nofollow and it appears it is linked to the comments on my site which I assume I would not want to be crawled. Is this the case and these notices are actually a positive thing? Please advise how to clear them up if these notices can be potentially harmful for my SEO. Thanks, Talia
Technical SEO | | M80Marketing0