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.
Does Google ignore duplicate meta descriptions?
-
Hi there SEO mozzers,
I am dealing with a website that has duplicate meta descriptions (we know is bad).As a punishment, Google totally ignores the meta descriptions and picks content from the website and displays it in SERP.
I already read the https://moz.com/blog/why-wont-google-use-my-meta-description but I was wondering if there is more information/knowledge out there.
Any tips are appreciated!
-
Hi Nikki,
Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.
I was worried that this is precisely the case.
-
Yes, if your meta descriptions are duplicates, Google won't use these and instead get a snippet of content on the page. If you want Google to use your assigned meta description, write original and quality descriptions. If there's absolutely no way for you to assign individual descriptions on pages (I've seen some page structures built to share 1 metatitle & description - it's ridiculous), make sure the first few sentences of the page are acceptable as your description as Google would likely pull that info.
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 Ignoring Canonical Tag for Hundreds of Sites
Bazaar Voice provides a pretty easy-to-use product review solution for websites (especially sites on Magento): https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/bazaarvoice-conversations-1.html If your product has over a certain number of reviews/questions, the plugin cuts off the number of reviews/questions that appear on the page. To see the reviews/questions that are cut off, you have to click the plugin's next or back function. The next/back buttons' URLs have a parameter of "bvstate....." I have noticed Google is indexing this "bvstate..." URL for hundreds of sites, even with the proper rel canonical tag in place. Here is an example with Microsoft: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zcxT7MRHHREJ:www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Surface-Book/productID.325716000%3Fbvstate%3Dpg:8/ct:r+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us My website is seeing hundreds of these "bvstate" urls being indexed even though we have a proper rel canonical tag in place. It seems that Google is ignoring the canonical tag. In Webmaster Console, the main source of my duplicate titles/metas in the HTML improvements section is the "bvstate" URLs. I don't necessarily want to block "bvstate" in the robots.txt as it will prohibit Google from seeing the reviews that were cutoff. Same response for prohibiting Google from crawling "bvstate" in Paramters section of Webmaster Console. Should I just keep my fingers crossed that Google honors the rel canonical tag? Home Depot is another site that has this same issue: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:k0MBLFcu2PoJ:www.homedepot.com/p/DUROCK-Next-Gen-1-2-in-x-3-ft-x-5-ft-Cement-Board-172965/202263276%23!bvstate%3Dct:r/pg:2/st:p/id:202263276+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | redgatst1 -
Ecommerce Site - Duplicate product descriptions & SKU pages
Hi I have a couple of questions regarding the best way to optimise SKU pages on a large ecommerce site. At the moment we have 2 landing pages per product - one is the primary landing page with no SKU, the other includes the SKU in the URL so our sales people & customers can find it when using the search facility on the site. The SKU landing page has a canonical pointing to the primary page as they're duplicates. Is this the best way? Or is it better to have the one page with the SKU in the URL? Also, we have loads of products with the very similar product descriptions, I am working on trying to include a unique paragraph or few sentences on these to improve the content - how dangerous is the duplicate content within your own site? I know its best to have totally unique content, but it won't be possible on a site with thousands of products and a small team. At the moment I am trying to prioritise the products to update. Thank you 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Google Cache Is Blank for Text-only
Hi, I'm doing some SEO for www.suprafootwear.com, and for some reason when I go to text-only in google cache, nothing shows up. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:suprafootwear.com&es_sm=91&strip=1 That seems to be the case for all of the different pages on the site, but the content is still appearing on the serp. I have never seen this before, and I'm not sure what's happening. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bigwavew0 -
Real Estate MLS listings - Does Google Consider duplicate content?
I have a real estate website. The site has all residential properties for sale in a certain State (MLS property listings). These properties also appear on 100's of other real estate sites, as the data is pulled from a central place where all Realtors share their listings. Question: will having these MLS listings indexed and followed by Google increase the ratio of duplicate vs original content on my website and thus negatively affect ranking for various keywords? If so, should I set the specific property pages as "no index, no follow" so my website will appear to have less duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Tabs and duplicate content?
We own this site http://www.discountstickerprinting.co.uk/ and just a little concerned as I right clicked open in new tab on the tab content section and it went to a new page For example if you right click on the price tab and click open in new tab you will end up with the url
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson
http://www.discountstickerprinting.co.uk/#tabThree Does this mean that our content is being duplicated onto another page? If so what should I do?0 -
Number of images on Google?
Hello here, In the past I was able to find out pretty easily how many images from my website are indexed by Google and inside the Google image search index. But as today looks like Google is not giving you any numbers, it just lists the indexed images. I use the advanced image search, by defining my domain name for the "site or domain" field: http://www.google.com/advanced_image_search and then Google returns all the images coming from my website. Is there any way to know the actual number of images indexed? Any ideas are very welcome! Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau1 -
Ecommerce Duplicate Product Descriptions across 3 websites
Hi, We are an e commerce company that has our own domain but also sell the same products on eBay and Amazon. What is the feeling on the same exact descriptions being used on different platforms? Do they count as duplicate content? Will our domain be punished/penalised as our domain does not have as much authority as EBay or Amazon? We have over 5,000 products with our own hand written product descriptions. We want our website to be the main place/ have priority over the above market places. What's the best suggestion/solution? thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Roy19730 -
Some viagra spammer somehow fooled Google into thinking the title and description metatags of a site pointing to me are about viagra. How did they do that? How do I fix this?
In performing a link: to my site, I found this: Video Of People Using Viagra - Online Drug Store, Guaranteed Shipping <cite>www.planetherbs.com/affiliate-program.html</cite> - Cached -Block all www.planetherbs.com results1 day ago – Video Of People Using Viagra. Online Drug Store, Guaranteed Shipping. Check Order Status. Natural and healthy products! If you go to that url, you will see it's just an affiliate program page. Some viagra spammer somehow changed the title and description metatags that google sees (not actually) and links from what appears to be spammy pages are pointing to me. I don't want to get dinged for this. How do I fix these for myself and planetherbs.com? And how did the spammer do this???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KatMouse0
