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 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
-
Max-snippet max length
Regarding Google's new max-snippet:[number], this is specifically for the length of the meta description? Also, does anyone know what the max character length is?
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer81 -
HTML entity characters in meta descriptions
Is it okay to leave HTML entity characters, such as " in meta descriptions? Will search engines translate these appropriately?
Technical SEO | | ellenu0 -
What punctuation can you use in meta tags? Are there any Google does not like?
So I know you can use dashes and | in meta tags, but can anyone tell me what other punctuation you can use? Also, it'd be great to know what punctuation you can't use. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Trevorneo1 -
Commas in Meta Title and Description Okay?
Hey there guys, have heard some recent information from some experts that utilizing commas in headings, meta titles or descriptions is not good for ranking. Can you guys please shed some light on this? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | MrGlobalization0 -
Miss meta description on 404 page
Hi, My 404 page did not have meta description. Is it an error? Because I run report and seomoz said that a problem. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | JohnHuynh0 -
Rel=Canonical, WWW vs non WWW and SEO
Okay so I'm a bit of a loss here. For what ever reason just about every single Wordpress site I has will turn www.mysite.com into mysite.com in the browser bar. I assume this is the rel=canonical tag at work, there are no 301s on my site. When I use the Open Site Explorer and type in www.mysite.com it shows a domain authority of around 40 and a few hundred backlinks... and then I get the message. Oh Hey! It looks like that URL redirects to XXXXXX. Would you like to see data for <a class="clickable redirects">that URL instead</a>? So if I click to see this data instead I have less than half of that domain authority and about 2 backlinks. *** Does this make a difference SEO wise? Should my non WWW be redirecting to my WWW instead because that's where the domain authority and backlinks are? Why am I getting two different domain authority and backlink counts if they are essentially the same? Or am I wrong and all that link juice and authority passes just the same?
Technical SEO | | twilightofidols0 -
Use of Meta Tag - MSSmartTagsPreventParsing
We've inherited some sites from another developer that had the following tag: All references I can find to it are from 2004. What is the purpose and is it worth including in pages/sites we build?
Technical SEO | | wcksmith0 -
Syndication: Link back vs. Rel Canonical
For content syndication, let's say I have the choice of (1) a link back or (2) a cross domain rel canonical to the original page, which one would you choose and why? (I'm trying to pick the best option to save dev time!) I'm also curious to know what would be the difference in SERPs between the link back & the canonical solution for the original publisher and for sydication partners? (I would prefer not having the syndication partners disappeared entirely from SERPs, I just want to make sure I'm first!) A side question: What's the difference in real life between the Google source attribution tag & the cross domain rel canonical tag? Thanks! PS: Don't know if it helps but note that we can syndicate 1 article to multiple syndication partners (It would't be impossible to see 1 article syndicated to 50 partners)
Technical SEO | | raywatson0