Meta-description not used at all times
-
Hi all
We are marketing an e-commerce site and seem to have a weird issue. For some reason the clearly specified meta description is not being used in the SERPs. Had a look in the source but all tags seems to be there.
The site can be found here:
www.bangerhead.seA sample search in Google that uses the wrong info in the SERP:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C5CHFA_enSE548SE548&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#safe=off&q=bangerheadAny ideas to why this is? Grateful for any inputHave a nice day
Fredrik
-
To expand on what Ryan was saying, your query was for "bangerhead" & your meta descriptions states:
So in this case, since your query was not in your meta description, Google typically will pull a snippet containing that keyword:
**Bangerhead **Professional Fresh Me Up! (200ml) · **Bangerhead **Professional Fresh Me... Moroccanoil Treatment (50 ml) · RefectoCil Frans- & Ögonbrynsfärg.
-
Hi Fredrik. Google will pull description text from snippets throughout the page as per their documentation here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?rd=1. While it's a best practice to write titles and meta descriptions, that Google will use them is no guaranteed. Here' s the part pertaining to your situation:
The description attribute within the tag is a good way to provide a concise, human-readable summary of each page’s content. Google will sometimes use the meta description of a page in search results snippets, if we think it gives users a more accurate description than would be possible purely from the on-page content. Accurate meta descriptions can help improve your clickthrough; here are some guidelines for properly using the meta description.
Cheers!
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
-
UK version of site showing US Cache and meta description
Hi Fellow Moz'ers We seem to have an issue where some of our UK site is showing meta descriptions from our US site in the serp's and when you check the cache: of the site it's brining up the .com instead of the .co.uk site. example: cache:https://www.tinyme.co.uk/name-labels shows the US site We've checked the href lang tags and they look ok to me (but i'm not an expert) https://www.tinyme.co.uk/name-labels" hreflang="en-gb"/> https://www.tinyme.com/name-labels" hreflang="en-us"/> https://www.tinyme.com.au/name-labels" hreflang="x-default" /> https://www.tinyme.com.au/name-labels" hreflang="en-au"/> We've had a search around and seen people have similar issues, but cant seem to find a definitive solution.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tinyme1 -
Displaying Long Product Descriptions on Mobile
Hello, One of our clients has a website which sells health products and supplements. All of the products have detailed descriptions that include ingredients information, usage, supplements facts, detailed information on how the products affect you, a detailed guarantee and FAQs. Our client would like to display a more synthesised product description on mobile devices. This would be a shortened description which would make it easier for people to understand what the benefits of the products are. At the moment we still have the previously developed 'Read Product Description' button that expands and reveals more text. We need to remove this and display a different shortened description but still follow Google's best practices. If the content on the mobile differs from the website, will it have a detrimental effect on the website's ranking in Google? If this is so, we face a barrier when trying to create a summarised version of the website for mobiles. Had anyone had a similar experience? If so, please advise on what the best approach would be for this to maintain a high ranking in Google, but display differing content across platforms. Much appreciated,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OptimiseWeb
Gabriel0 -
Wrong redirect used
Hi Folks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Patrick_556
I have a query & looking for some opinions. Our site migrated to https://
Somewhere along the line between the developer & hosting provided 302 redirect was implemented instead of the recommended 301 (the 301 rule was not being honured in the htaccess file.)
1 week passed, I noticed some of our key phrases disappear from the serps 😞 When investigated, I noticed this the incorrect redirect was implemented. The correct 301 redirect has now been implemented & functioning correctly. I have created a new https property in webmaster tools, Submitted the sitemap, Provided link in the robots.txt file to the https sitemap Canonical tags set to correct https. My gut feeling is that Google will take some time to realise the problem & take some time to update the search results we lost. Has anyone experienced this before or have any further thoughts on how to rectify asap.0 -
Is it a bad idea to use our meta description as a short description of a product on that product page?
Does this count as duplicating content even though the meta description has no effect on search results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | USAMM0 -
Canonicals: use when page has same listings, but displayed very differently?
Say you have a listing of movies. In that listing, there are 5 different view types. One has the scenes broken out. Another has only the box covers. Two of the views have movie descriptions, but others don't. Still, the listings themselves are the same, and you only want the default view to be indexed. Is it appropriate to use canonicals in this case? The alternative is to noindex the other views, but the site already has rankings and deep links. If Google does see the pages as unique and we apply a canonical, could we be penalized or would they merely ignore it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LahomaManagement0 -
Meta tags - are they case sensitive?
I just ran the wordtracker tool and noticed something interesting. The tool didn't pick up our meta description. It's strange as our meta descriptions appear in organic search results and Moz never reported missing meta descriptions.After reviewing other pages, I noticed our meta description tag is written as the following: name="Description" content=" I never thought about this, but are meta tags case sensitive? Should it be written as: name="description" content=" Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Meta Description In Blog Feed
The SEOmoz crawl tool is giving me a lot of crawl errors because my blog feed and my blog tags do not have meta descriptions. Can you even give this type of content meta descriptions? If so how can you do it, as this content is created dynamically by Wordpress?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyNet0 -
Meta HTTP-EQUIV
Hi people! When you try to access http://www.ufam.edu.br you are redirected to http://portal.ufam.edu.br. Here's the code: <title>UFAM - Universidade Federal do Amazonas</title> What are the implications for SEO of this ? Won't the juice be passed? Isn't it better for passing juice using redirect 301?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marcelocustodio0