Snippet showed in google search is not from metaDescription
-
This is my page https://www.collegehippo.com/graduate-school/programs/top-ranked-masters-degree-museum-museology-and-curatorial-studies
The metaDescription is
| |
| name="description" content="Master's degree in Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies is offered by 49 American universities. New York University had highest number of international students receiving a Master's degree. Johns Hopkins University had the most women graduates in this program. Job outlook for Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies is projected to grow 13 percent from 2016 to 2026, faster than average for all occupations. Median pay for Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies in 2018 was $53,360. The number of jobs were 11170. Check out best universities offering online Master's program in Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies "/> |
| | |But when I see the page in google search results for (museum studies graduate programs), This is how it appears in the search results. It is showing the breadcrumbs from the page.
I am not sure why is google is treating the page like this. It was not like that 5 months back. Nothing much changed in page and google is displaying the page content like this . How can I fix this?
-
Hi there,
Thanks so much for the quick response and clarification. This is very helpful, and I am tracking with you (completely) regarding your suggestions to the original poster.
Thanks also for the encouragement. Only twice in my career have I heard someone say anything even remotely negative about my SEO efforts, so paired with your comment and my experience, I'm going to take what this client is saying with a grain of salt.
Greatly appreciated,
Zack -
Zack,
My comments were specifically regarding meta descriptions, and the original poster's efforts to make sure their meta description would be used in the SERP snippets shown for various searches. Since a page might rank for many different keywords, not all of those can be in the meta description, and so for some searches, Google is going to instead show page content rather than the meta description. And I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. For example, if you have a 10% CTR with your own meta description, and a 12% CTR with the one Google is showing, why would you want to try to influence Google to show something else?
So, that's why from a prioritization standpoint, I advised to focus meta description work (and only meta description work) on SERP listings with underperforming CTR. And then, within those, to focus first on listings with more impressions, just because those will have the most amplification of the efforts.
But for other SEO efforts, especially those where ranking factors are concerned (as opposed to meta descriptions which are not ranking factors, at least not directly), then a CTR and impression-based prioritization wouldn't necessarily make sense.
The approach you described seems very thorough and legit for keyword research. But then, as far as what to do with those keywords (i.e. whether to update meta descriptions), that's what I was focusing on with the OP's questions.
-
This comment has stuck out to me for a while, and I thought I would ask about it if you don't mind.
We recently performed what I would consider extensive keyword research for a medium sized business, and they did not seem impressed with the keyword seed lists we assembled for them. To gather the seed lists for each page, we did two things:
-
Head into their GA and GSC to see every single keyword people used to get to their website last year, and took each of those, then split them up into ideas for each page. We then did as many variations on them as we could think of by adding their city (San Jose), state, country, pluralization, etc., and wound up with thousands of keywords in their "our ideas" seed list.
-
Second, we used Moz Pro Keyword Explorer for additional ideas, entering in their pages one by one, to see what Moz came up with, then exported those for each page as additional ideas.
Afterwards, we took ALL of our ideas and ALL of the Moz ideas, had them split up page by page (of course), and checked for the best combinations of volume, difficulty, ctr, priority, etc..
All that said, I believed this to be a rock solid approach until I saw your comment, which made me wonder. Do you feel this was a solid effort? Have you seen better results from a different approach? (In my mind, this was far better than what I believed what most other agencies would have provided them with, and I am almost wondering if their complaining is an attempt to renegotiate on their invoice -- something their owner is unfortunately keen on doing.)
Greatly appreciated,
Zack -
-
You bet. Hope that was helpful.
Thanks,
Zack -
You can't 100% control the snippet. Google owns the SERP experience, and in some cases their algorithm determines that content from your page will be a better snippet to show than your meta description. But in general, if your meta description contains the keyword being searched, and an appropriate length of content surrounding that, the chance that the meta description is used for the snippet is higher. Whether that will translate to a higher CTR though is not always the case, and since you can't include every possible search term in your meta descriptions, most of us prefer to focus on ones where we are getting a good number of impressions but not a great CTR. It's a prioritization thing.
-
I saw that but I thought it will remove url. Did not knew about cache. Thanks. will look
-
Thank you. My problem is how do I control what is being shown in snippet? I mean it is a long page with good content but I am not sure why google is picking breadcrumbs. I have changed meta description and will wait for results.
-
I wouldn't necessarily target the keywords for which you are already getting traffic. The purpose of your snippet is to help your listing stand out from the others around it, so it gets clicks. I would look in GSC for queries where you are getting impressions, and then check how your snippet looks for those, especially as compared with the other listings around yours. As well, I would also look for queries where you have a significant number of impressions, but not a good click through rate. That's another indication that your meta descriptions (or page content being pulled into the snippet) aren't compelling enough. You don't necessarily need for your meta description to be used as the snippet, but you do want your snippet to be compelling so it gets as high of a CTR as possible.
-
Hi there,
To chime in, have you also considered trying heading into Google Search Console > Removals to submit a request for Google to clear a cached URL? This may be all that's needed, without further looking into it.
Hope this helps.
-Zack
-
Thanks for the reply. Does this mean that I should rework on the meta description of the page and include the keyword for which I am getting traffic.
-
The meta description is not always used for snippets, depending on what keywords/phrases are searched. When the search term is not in the snippet, but is on the page (and "page" does include elements such as breadcrumbs, top navigation menus, etc.). The search engines will often show the verbiage on the "page" surrounding the search terms. But also, your meta description is pretty lengthy. So you might have better luck with a description in the 100-150 character range.
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 to get a mobile thumbnail image next to the search result?
Hey! I noticed the last few months that a lot of google searches now show an image next to your result when on mobile. i managed to get my listing to show an image before but I made some changes to the image and site and can’t seem to get Google to ahow the new image (or any image). I’ve added the image to schema mark up and still no luck. Wouod ahyone have any advice on how to get the image picked up, or st least help increase the odds? The site is https://tourstoniagarafalls.com and you can see it on search (for me it shows on the bottom of page 1) for the keyword “Niagara Falls tours“. Thanks again!
On-Page Optimization | | Originaladam0 -
How does Google treat Dynamic Titles?
Let's say my website can be accessed in only 3 states Colorado, Arizona and Ohio. I want to display different information to each visitor based on where they are located. For this I would also like the title to change based on their location. Not quite sure how Google we treat the title and rank the site.... Any resources you can provide would be helpful. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Firestarter-SEO0 -
Ecommerce Product Reviews - Show All, Most Recent, Sampling?
Just curious what you guys are doing in the way of displaying product reviews on ecommerce sites. I couldn't find much on best practices here so I'm turning to the Moz community. We're moving our main site to Magento and plan to launch it in a few months. Some of our products have 1,000+ reviews and we're wondering what the best way to show them is. I'm thinking just put them all on there (provided it doesn't slow down the page) to increase unique content per page, more keywords, etc. We've also thought of showing just the 50-100 most recent reviews or filtering the reviews and showing a sampling we choose. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | Kingof50 -
Blocking Subdomain from Google Crawl and Index
Hey everybody, how is it going? I have a simple question, that i need answered. I have a main domain, lets call it domain.com. Recently our company will launch a series of promotions for which we will use cname subdomains, i.e try.domain.com, or buy.domain.com. They will serve a commercial objective, nothing more. What is the best way to block such domains from being indexed in Google, also from counting as a subdomain from the domain.com. Robots.txt, No-follow, etc? Hope to hear from you, Best Regards,
On-Page Optimization | | JesusD3 -
Blogposts and Google Rankings
I'm pretty new to all of this, my new website is starting to come along nicely in the SERPs, now appear on page 4 for my main key phrases were I didn't appear last week at all. I'm now on a mission to get myself ranked higher but my website is pretty much done... apart from the ongoing blogposts that I need to add, I'm a wedding photographer so every shoot is going on to it. My question, my blogposts aren't necessarily targeting my main key phrase, it might be mentioned once or twice but ultimately it'll most likely be the venue that steals the targeting. By adding the blogposts (I still have 36 to do) and using my keyphrase sparing, will this help to elevate me from page 4 in google? I know that I still need to build backlinks etc to but just something I can't seem to find an answer for on google hehe.
On-Page Optimization | | MartinWardPhoto0 -
Google Places Problem
This may have been answered before but I have 2 questions. When I placed a business in Google Places, the "generic" ranking fell off the map. I now just have the 1 line Google places reference and that is all I can find. How can I get around that and get my 4 line description to show again? Do I have to delete my Places account? Before the Google Places account was built, the company was moving up the SERP ranks, now he is on pg 1 for Places but the other SERP positions have disappeared. This is true for all the keywords we are targeting. If there is not a Places reference he shows on Pg 3-5 (given the website is 4 weeks old, I think this is not bad). For the same client, he that services many of the surrounding communities. How do I get Google to recognize the various towns he services during a search? He places well for his "home" town but not at all for the other towns. if it helps any, the website is www.myairstat.com. Thanks for the help. Scott
On-Page Optimization | | scott5180 -
Strange Keywords Google Webmaster Tools
Hey, I have a website about "coffee machines". Since a few months I added a vBulletin forum with vbSEO installed. The keywords Google found before I added the forum where highly related to the topic of my website (e.g. "coffee", "machine" etc), which I checked through the webmaster tools. However, I recently checked again and noticed that Google finds mostly keywords like "post", "forum", "thread", "share" etc. with high significance. Those "keywords" only appear on the forum. Now I'm a bit worried since Google states "These should reflect the subject matter of your site." Any advice how to solve that issue? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | netminds0 -
Should I show and allow following of deep navigation links?
Hello mozzers, I am currently designing an e-commerce system for various companies, my pilot being www.containerpadlocks.co.uk. I you look on the left in the navigation, you will see only the top level categories are visible (and in the html). Sub categories are only shown if viewing a parent category, or a product in that category/subcategory. My question would be, should I be listing all my subcategories in that navigation (hidden from the user) to allow Google to index my pages easily, and will this promote more PageRank and internal links for my site, or will this just dilute my page juice? Many Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | jcarter
James0