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
-
Change category of a post
Hi, Finally I decide to renovate my site structure, but I have a question, if I have an old post and I change its category there is some SEO problem? The post permalink is "www.sitename.com/namepost". Last question, it's better to have one category for post or more than one category for post? Thank You
Technical SEO | | Marco3961 -
Duplicate Title Tag
We are getting a Duplicate Title Tag error on our pages but we have different titles and the differences are being seen by Google. We are using the code <%@ Page Title="School Lunch Software Pricing || EZ School Apps"%> Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | EZParentCenter0 -
My SERP meta description is displaying 315 characters...
Hi Mozzers, We have recently taken the #2 spot for our main keyword in Google UK serp. I just checked again and we have dropped to #4 and our meta description is no longer there as it has been replaced with some homepage content... 315 characters of homepage content right up to the full stop. I'm a little confused. A couple of our competitors meta descriptions are showing the same, extra long homepage text instead. Is there something totally normal and harmless causing this or do I need to be monitoring/changing something? Has Google made an update to allow for longer meta decs? Any advice appreciated! sWrBcuB.png
Technical SEO | | SanjidaKazi0 -
Tags, Categories, & Duplicate Content
Looking for some advice on a duplicate content issue that we're having that definitely isn't unique to us. See, we are allowing all our tag and category pages, as well as our blog pagination be indexed and followed, but Moz is detecting that all as duplicate content, which is obvious since it is the same content that is on our blog posts. We've decided in the past to keep these pages the way they are as it hasn't seemed to hurt us specifically and we hoped it would help our overall ranking. We haven't seen positive or negative signals either way, just the warnings from Moz. We are wondering if we should noindex these pages and if that could cause a positive change, but we're worried it might cause a big negative change as well. Have you confronted this issue? What did you decide and what were the results? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | bradhodson0 -
Meta description tag problems according to an seo tool
hi, my site is www.in2town.co.uk I am using an seo tool to check on my site and how to improve the seo. The tool is here. http://www.juxseo.com/report/view/51ebf9deab900 for some reason it has brought up errors, it claims i have not got a meta description even though i have and have doubled checked in my source code the errors it has brought up is as follows, and i would like to know if this is a fault of the seo tool or am i doing something wrong Does the description tag exist?0/1 <a id="sub_toggle_12" class="sub_toggle contract_sub"></a>Hide Info Description Tag: Explanation: The meta description tag does not help your rankings but it is your opportunity to encourage prospects to click. The meta description should describe the content of your web page, include a strong call to action, and include your keyword. Action: Make sure you are using the meta description tag. It is found in the section of your page. checkboxIs there only one description tag?0/2<a id="sub_toggle_13" class="sub_toggle expand_sub"></a>More InfocheckboxIs your description less than 156 characters?0/1<a id="sub_toggle_14" class="sub_toggle expand_sub"></a>More InfocheckboxIs your keyword in the description tag?0/3 <a id="sub_toggle_15" class="sub_toggle expand_sub"></a>More Info it also says about the canocial tag which it claims i have more than one Is the canonical tag optmized? Is there only one canonical tag?0/4 <a id="sub_toggle_10" class="sub_toggle contract_sub"></a>Hide Info Explanation: You only need one of these to direct a search engine. Don't muddy the waters. Action: Make sure you only have one canonical tag. This only applies if you use the canonical tag. any help and advice would be greatregards
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
How to structure rich / multi-media on Category pages to pass the link juice?
Fellow SEOs, I'm trying to add videos, blog posts and new fun articles/top 10s/party tips etc to corresponding categories for a costume site. Some of the content I want on these category pages already exists on our blog, the videos are hosted on YouTube and some of the content hasn't been created yet. We're thinking of posting snippets of the articles that link to the full versions vs. displaying the entire pieces on the cat pages.We're also thinking of a 'view all cool content' under the snippets that brings you to a page similar to : www.site.com/pirate-costumes/funideas and it would list everything we have for media for that category - i obviously just want to do what's best for the user but also what will maintain the juice from the media on into the category pages - Another issue would be duplicate content issues arising from posting snippets and/or the same copy that also lives on the blog...**Can someone please help here? Would _really _appreciate it.****Thank you! **Troy
Technical SEO | | Troyville0 -
Error: Missing Meta Description Tag on pages I can't find in order to correct
This seems silly, but I have errors on blog URLs in our WordPress site that I don't know how to access because they are not in our Dashboard. We are using All in One SEO. The errors are for blog archive dates, authors and just simply 'blog'. Here are samples: http://www.fateyes.com/2012/10/
Technical SEO | | gfiedel
http://www.fateyes.com/author/gina-fiedel/
http://www.fateyes.com/blog/ Does anyone know how to input descriptions for pages like these?
Thanks!!0 -
NoIndex/NoFollow pages showing up when doing a Google search using "Site:" parameter
We recently launched a beta version of our new website in a subdomain of our existing site. The existing site is www.fonts.com with the beta living at new.fonts.com. We do not want Google to crawl the new site until it's out of beta so we have added the following on all pages: However, one of our team members noticed that google is displaying results from new.fonts.com when doing an "site:new.fonts.com" search (see attached screenshot). Is it possible that Google is indexing the content despite the noindex, nofollow tags? We have double checked the syntax and it seems correct except the trailing "/". I know Google still crawls noindexed pages, however, the fact that they're showing up in search results using the site search syntax is unsettling. Any thoughts would be appreciated! DyWRP.png
Technical SEO | | ChrisRoberts-MTI0