Google not displaying meta description
-
Hi,
one of my clients is receiving the following error in SERP - "A description of the page is not available because of this site's robots.txt".
The site is built on WordPress and I realized that by default, the settings were checked to blocks bots from crawling the site. So, I turned it off, fixed robots.txt and submitted the sitemap again. Since, then it's been almost 10 days, the problem still exists.
Can anyone tell me what should be done to fix it or if there's a way to get Google to recrawl the pages again.
-
Hi Mayank,
Use the fetch tool listed above to see what URL's are being blocked. If any, it maybe it is just taking Google some time to get things indexed for you.
-
I have fixed robots.txt, have submitted fresh sitemap to the webmaster. the problem still exists.
Also, when i look for webmaster >> Google Index >> Index Status >> Total indexed are 896 and Blocked by Robots are 626. The numbers have got better, but very slow. I don't think pages are blocked by Robots any more. Not sure what can be done about it.
-
Don is correct. In GWT you'll be able to fetch as Google and see the results of your changes. Another thing that can help crawl the page would be making sure the site has at least a few inbound links, but Don's answer should have you covered in the near term.
-
Hi Mayank,
After you fixed the Robots.txt you can ask Google to recrawl it. I recommend you do a fetch first to make sure it is crawlable.
Depending on the site, and frequency Google sets up its own recrawl rate but using the methods above you can be sure the problem is fixed.
Hope this helps,
Don
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
-
No images in Google index
No images are indexed on this site (client of ours): http://www.rubbermagazijn.nl/. We've tried everything (descriptive alt texts, image sitemaps, fetch&render, check robots) but a site:www.rubbermagazijn.nl shows 0 image results and the sitemap report in Search Console shows 0 images indexed. We're not sure how to proceed from here. Is there anyone with an idea what the problem could be?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Adriaan.Multiply0 -
Is it possible that Google is pulling description from third party websites and displaying in the description section in organic result?
Hi all, I have come across the most weird situation ever in my SEO career. Google is displaying description in organic results for brand term under the website URL that doesnt exist on the website ANYWHERE but this description does appear on some directory sites created back in 2002 or so. Is there a possibility that Google is pulling info from directory sites and displaying as a description in the organic results? I am super confused! Help needed! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika10 -
Google displaying SERP link in Japanese
A chamber of commerce site near me has Google displaying their link in japanese characters when they search for them by name. If you google Eastern monmouth chamber of commerce, you will see this. The site is emacc.org. Can anyone tell me what might cause this or how to resolve?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jeremyskillings0 -
Fix Google Index error
I changed my blog URL structure Can Someone please let me how to solve this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael.Leonard0 -
Weirdist Meta Description I've Seen in a SERP
For one e-commerce website, in place of the proper meta description, Google is showing a 318-character-long mix of snippets from the homepage content for the domain search (e.g. [example.com]). A brand search returns the correct meta description - as do the keywords the homepage ranks for. I know Google changes the meta description if it doesn't think it's relevant, but this one (there is only one) is and has (as far as we know) shown until now, and I've never seen such a mix of text in the SERP, and so many characters - it's picking up random text from bits of anchor text e.g. "privacy policy", title attributes from links, labels from radio buttons and more. The home page W3C validates apart from a couple of basic things like missing alt text. The only things that might be related that don't are some custom meta name tags added by the CMS - but I wouldn't think this would make any difference to whether a meta description is displayed properly or not? I've recommended we wait until tomorrow to see if Google fixes this on recrawl, but does anyone have any ideas if it doesn't? The homepage doesn't feature much standalone text, so I was thinking if we add a few extra words it might encourage Google to pick from that if it doesn't want to use the meta description. The text would have to be useful for users and fit in with the design of course, which could be awkward...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alex-Harford1 -
How to improve Google Places Account
Hello, A friend of mine has a google places account. Her website is http://debidonner.com/ You can see her places account listed under "life coach scottsdale arizona" I've attached a screenshot of her categories. I just added "NLP Coach" and "Personal Coach" today, so results are only for the other categories. We're looking for ways to improve it. We've had 43 clicks for driving directions. 4 map clicks, and 0 website clicks (how good is that, by the way) Thanks! screenshot-google-places.jpg screenshot-google-places2.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Google badge extracted to SERPs
It's a while ago that (i thought) I read the following information on the Google badge. Here https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/badge/ we have the implementation guide, however I was under the impression the Google badge could be thereafter extracted into SERPs so the user could follow etc... direct from SERPs. I can't find anything confirming this. I think that it might clash with authorship data which does a similar job, but where a site page is not relevant to authorship at all, I would have thought linking back to the G+ page from SERPs was a sensible option. Can anyone confirm the Google badge can appear in SERPs?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | richcowley0 -
Google omitting some entries
Hi, I used this tool to test some domains. The tool can be found at http://www.virante.com/seo-tools/duplicate-content I have no questions about the other checks but with the similarity check. My question is how do i get Google not to omit some entries very similar to the top 1000 pages on my site? Will appreciate your answers, thanks. Suleman
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | esuleman0