Meta description issue on Google
-
Hello,
I have a small issue on Google with our Meta Description tag not always being properly displayed.
If you search for the term: Globe Car (in two words), everything is being displayed properly: http://screencast.com/t/YQCUkJnk
Now do the same search for the term GlobeCar (in one word) and the meta tag set into our homepage seems to be totallly ignored and Google is now displaying something that is generated from out of their hat: http://screencast.com/t/K0KeeRGSgspV
Anyone has an idea what would cause this?
Thanks!
-
For the "globe car" keyword, google shows the result from your meta description.
But for "globecar" keyword, I think it's showing the result from your G+ business listing page. It should be happening for Structured Data (schema) or as it's your brand name.
-
Hi,
I recently answered a question just like this here. This also includes a link to a video by Matt Cutts in regards to this topic.
The key here is that Google will take the "search words" and try to general results that are the most applicable to that search. In many cases that means they generate their own descriptions.
This is a huge task and Google does a very good job with most searches, however I have never seen a perfect search engine. In your case Globe Car and GlobeCar are 2 different keywords sets to Google. For very popular terms like WordPress and Word Press, Google has learned to treat them the same, but it can't do this for every word or set of words.
I hope this helps,
Don
-
"1. Focus Your META Description
Let's say that, for some reason, we really wanted that SEOmoz blog post to rank for "January 19". One solution is to make sure that phrase appears in our META description for the relevant page. If Google can find the matching copy in your description, they're more likely to use the tag as is. It's also just a good exercise – figuring out what your core target keywords are and targeting them naturally in your META description (don't just make it a list of keywords, of course) will help you focus your overall on-page SEO efforts."
https://moz.com/blog/why-wont-google-use-my-meta-descriptionAnd i didn't see GlobeCar in your meta description. That's why on one keyword Google didn't display your meta description and show something from code that contain GlobeCar. Also in title you have "Globe Auto", domain is different and this will confuse user so they didn't display original description.
I forgot also this one:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?hl=en
"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."
seems that they think that your description is different than on-page content.
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
-
Http and https issue in Google SERP
Hi, I've noticed that Google indexing some of my pages as regular http, like this: http://www.example.com/accounts/ and some pages are being indexed as https, like this: https://www.example.com/platforms/ When I've performed site audit check in various SEO tools I got something around +450 pages duplicated and showing me pairs of the same URL pages, one time with http and one time with https. In our site there is the possibility for people to register and and open an account, later on to login to our website with their login details. In our company I'm not the one that is responsible for the site's maintenance and I would like to know if this is an issue, and if this is an issue - to know what causing it and how to fix it so I'll be able to forward the solution to the person in charge. Additionally I would like to know in general, what is the real purpose of https vs. http and to know what is the preferred method that our website should use. Currently when URLs are typed manually to the address bar, all the URLs are loading fine - with or without https written at the start of each URL. I'm not allowed to expose our site's name, this is why I wrote example.com instead, I hope you can understand that. Thank you so much for your help and I'm looking forward reading your answers.
Technical SEO | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Pagination Issue
Hello Community, We have a pagination issue on a set of pages : http://homengo.com/s/location/ http://homengo.com/s/location/?page=1 and so on ( ?page=2, ?page=3, ...). As you can see in the source code the pagination rel and prev are there. First question : does moz crawler know and recognize pagination ? Second question : if yes then do you know what could be wrong with pagination on these pages ? Thanks
Technical SEO | | seomengo0 -
Google is changing the title
Hi! Lately i have seen that Google changed the page titles for some clients, not all... its about 30% of them. For example, the title looks likes this after the Google change: Company name: SEO and Pay per click management But in on that page it looks like this: SEO and Pay per click management - Company name Does anyone know why?
Technical SEO | | DanielNordahl1 -
Duplicate Title/Meta Descriptions
Hi I had some error messages in the webmaster account, stating I had duplicate title/meta descriptions. Ive since fixed it, typically how long does it take for a full crawl if Ive fixed these issues? Webmaster is still showing problems with various Title/Descriptions. Also was wondering if I should block individual pages on a large ecomerce site? EX of a Large site - http://www.stubhub.com/chicago-bears-tickets/ (Page is structure and optimized) Then you have all individual games http://www.stubhub.com/chicago-bears-tickets/bears-vs-lions-soldier-field-4077064/ they have an H1 and a meta description, should the page above be blocked from google and concentrate only on the Pain page? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | TP_Marketing0 -
Tags showing up in Google
Yesterday a user pointed out to me that Tags were being indexed in Google search results and that was not a good idea. I went into my Yoast settings and checked the "nofollow, index" in my Taxanomies, but when checking the source code for no follow, I found nothing. So instead, I went into the robot.txt and disallowed /tag/ Is that ok? or is that a bad idea? The site is The Tech Block for anyone interested in looking.
Technical SEO | | ttb0 -
RSS Hacking Issue
Hi Checked our original rss feed - added it to Google reader and all the links go to the correct pages, but I have also set up the RSS feed in Feedburner. However, when I click on the links in Feedburner (which should go to my own website's pages) , they are all going to spam sites, even though the title of the link and excerpt are correct. This isn't a Wordpress blog rss feed either, and we are on a very secure server. Any ideas whatsoever? There is no info online anywhere and our developers haven't seen this before. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Kerry220 -
Google caching meta tags from another site?
We have several sites on the same server. On the weekend we relocated some servers, changing IP address. A client has since noticed something freaky with the meta tags. 1. They search for their companyname, and another site from the same server appears in position 1. It is completely unrelated, has never happened before, and the company name is not used in any incoming text links. Eg search for company1 on Google. Company1.com.au appears at position 2, but at position1 is school1.com.au. The words company1 don't appear anywhere on the site. I've analysed all incoming links with a gazillion tools, and can't find any link text of company1, linking to school1. 2. Even more freaky, searching for company1.com.au at Google. The results at Google in position 1 for the last three days has been: Meta Title for school1 (but hovering/clicking actual goes to URL for company1)
Technical SEO | | ozgeekmum
Meta Description for school1
URL for company1.com.au Clicking on the cached copy of result1, it shows a cached version of school1 taken on March 18. Today is 29 March. Logically we are trying to get Google to spider both sites again quickly. We've asked the clients to update their home pages. Resubmitted xml sitemaps. Checked the HTTP status codes - both are happily returning 200s. Different cookies. I found another instance on a forum: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/10578/incorrect-meta-information-in-google Any ideas?0 -
Duplicate title issue
During the crwal SEO moz found duplicate title problems with quite a good number of pages. This was because my site has test questions like http://www.skill-guru.com/12/scjp-5-mock-test/questions and when user does next or previous, they can traverse to different pages but the title and descrition would remain same. How can this probkem be resolved ?
Technical SEO | | skill-guru2