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
-
How many images should I use in structured data for a product?
We have a basic printing website that offers business cards. Each type of business card has a few product images. Should we use structured data for all the images, or just the main image? What is your opinion about this? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Choice0 -
Description tag in code is different from what is shown in SERPS...
Hi there: We have a client whose website we built in WP, using Yoast Pro as our SEO plugin. I was reading some reports (actually coming out of SEMrush but we use Moz as well) and I am getting really varying results in the description are of the SERPS. Even though I'm seeing the copy we wrote in Yoast in the description tag code, the SERP is showing an excerpt from the copywriting on the site. What's even weirder is that SEMrush is pulling an entirely DIFFERENT description. I'm obviously missing out on the finer points of description tags, as Google clearly does not always choose to feature what is actually written in the description tag itself. Can someone explain to me what might be going on here? Thanks in advance,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey1 -
Should I use the on classified listing pages that have expired?
We have went back and forth on this and wanted to get some outside input. I work for an online listing website that has classified ads on it. These ads are generated by companies on our site advertising weekend events around the country. We have about 10,000 companies that use our service to generate their online ads. This means that we have thousands of pages being created each week. The ads have lots of content: pictures, sale descriptions, and company information. After the ads have expired, and the sale is no longer happening, we are currently placing the in the heads of each page. The content is not relative anymore since the ad has ended. The only value the content offers a searcher is the images (there are millions on expired ads) and the descriptions of the items for sale. We currently are the leader in our industry and control most of the top spots on Google for our keywords. We have been worried about cluttering up the search results with pages of ads that are expired. In our Moz account right now we currently have over 28k crawler warnings alerting us to the being in the page heads of the expired ads. Seeing those warnings have made us nervous and second guessing what we are doing. Does anybody have any thoughts on this? Should we continue with placing the in the heads of the expired ads, or should we be allowing search engines to index the old pages. I have seen websites with discontinued products keeping the products around so that individuals can look up past information. This is the closest thing have seen to our situation. Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated! -Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mellison0 -
Best use of Canonical Tag with Mini-Websites
Hello, I was wondering what the best way would be to implement Canonical Tags in kind of a unusual situation. The company I work for creates single property websites for real estate agents. We register a URL such as 123MainSt.com - however through DNS we redirect that to a path. For example: http://www.944milmadadr.com would redirect to: https://www.qwikvid.com/realestate/go/v1/home/?idx=wDg1Gdwt7wnQiR3LMeCx28qPnWTKM0JV If we wanted to rank high in the search engines for our clients: "944 Milmada Dr" - Would it be the best practice to Canonical: http://www.944milmadadr.com ? Thanks in advance for any feedback on this!! Jason
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Qwikvid0 -
Webmaster is giving errors of Duplicate Meta Descriptions and Duplicate Title Tags
Webmaster is giving errors of Duplicate Meta Descriptions and Duplicate Title Tags after I changes the permalinks structure in wordpress. It there a quick fix for this and how damaging is the above for seo. Thanks T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Taiger0 -
Using on two pages a keyword in alternative language in the title
Hello SEO wizards, The main language on my website is english, and I am wondering if I can add a keyword in russian to couple of pages to the title and image alt tag and maybe header , with the hope that it would rank in google with that russian keyword.. But I am not sure how google would react to that, I tried to search information on that, but could not find a clear answer.... Many thanks for anybody who takes time to respond
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bidilover0 -
Should I use individual product pages for different formats of the same product?
Hi All -- I'm working with a publishing client who is launching a new site. They have a large product catalogue offered in a number of format types (print, ebook, online learning, packages) with each one possessing a unique ISBN code. From past experience, I know that ISBN codes can be a really important ranking factor. We are currently trying to sort out product page guidelines. The proposed methods are: A single product page for all formats. The user then has the option to select which format they wish to purchase. The page would contain all key descriptors for each format, including: individual ISBN, format, title, price, author, etc. We would then use schema mark-up just to assist search engines with understanding and crawling. BUT we worry that the single page won't rank as well as say an invidual product page with a unique ISBN in the URL (for example: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470573325.html) Which leads to the next option... Individual URLs for each format. We understand that most e-commerce guidelines state you shouldn't dilute link equity amongst multiple pages with very similar products and descriptions. BUT we want searchers to be able to search by individual ISBN and still find that specific format within the SERPs. This seems to rule out canonicalizing, because we don't prefer one format over the other and still want say the ebook to show up as much as the print version. If anyone has any other options or considerations that we haven't thought about, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, U
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HarborOneBank0 -
Using the Word "Free" in Metadata
Hi Forum! I've searched previous questions, and couldn't find anything related to this. I know the word "free" when used in email marketing can trigger spam filters. If I use the word "free" in my metadata (title tag, description, and keywords just for fun) will I be penalized in any way? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0