Snippet showed in google search is not from metaDescription
-
This is my page https://www.collegehippo.com/graduate-school/programs/top-ranked-masters-degree-museum-museology-and-curatorial-studies
The metaDescription is
| |
| name="description" content="Master's degree in Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies is offered by 49 American universities. New York University had highest number of international students receiving a Master's degree. Johns Hopkins University had the most women graduates in this program. Job outlook for Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies is projected to grow 13 percent from 2016 to 2026, faster than average for all occupations. Median pay for Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies in 2018 was $53,360. The number of jobs were 11170. Check out best universities offering online Master's program in Museum, Museology and Curatorial Studies "/> |
| | |But when I see the page in google search results for (museum studies graduate programs), This is how it appears in the search results. It is showing the breadcrumbs from the page.
I am not sure why is google is treating the page like this. It was not like that 5 months back. Nothing much changed in page and google is displaying the page content like this . How can I fix this?
-
Hi there,
Thanks so much for the quick response and clarification. This is very helpful, and I am tracking with you (completely) regarding your suggestions to the original poster.
Thanks also for the encouragement. Only twice in my career have I heard someone say anything even remotely negative about my SEO efforts, so paired with your comment and my experience, I'm going to take what this client is saying with a grain of salt.
Greatly appreciated,
Zack -
Zack,
My comments were specifically regarding meta descriptions, and the original poster's efforts to make sure their meta description would be used in the SERP snippets shown for various searches. Since a page might rank for many different keywords, not all of those can be in the meta description, and so for some searches, Google is going to instead show page content rather than the meta description. And I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. For example, if you have a 10% CTR with your own meta description, and a 12% CTR with the one Google is showing, why would you want to try to influence Google to show something else?
So, that's why from a prioritization standpoint, I advised to focus meta description work (and only meta description work) on SERP listings with underperforming CTR. And then, within those, to focus first on listings with more impressions, just because those will have the most amplification of the efforts.
But for other SEO efforts, especially those where ranking factors are concerned (as opposed to meta descriptions which are not ranking factors, at least not directly), then a CTR and impression-based prioritization wouldn't necessarily make sense.
The approach you described seems very thorough and legit for keyword research. But then, as far as what to do with those keywords (i.e. whether to update meta descriptions), that's what I was focusing on with the OP's questions.
-
This comment has stuck out to me for a while, and I thought I would ask about it if you don't mind.
We recently performed what I would consider extensive keyword research for a medium sized business, and they did not seem impressed with the keyword seed lists we assembled for them. To gather the seed lists for each page, we did two things:
-
Head into their GA and GSC to see every single keyword people used to get to their website last year, and took each of those, then split them up into ideas for each page. We then did as many variations on them as we could think of by adding their city (San Jose), state, country, pluralization, etc., and wound up with thousands of keywords in their "our ideas" seed list.
-
Second, we used Moz Pro Keyword Explorer for additional ideas, entering in their pages one by one, to see what Moz came up with, then exported those for each page as additional ideas.
Afterwards, we took ALL of our ideas and ALL of the Moz ideas, had them split up page by page (of course), and checked for the best combinations of volume, difficulty, ctr, priority, etc..
All that said, I believed this to be a rock solid approach until I saw your comment, which made me wonder. Do you feel this was a solid effort? Have you seen better results from a different approach? (In my mind, this was far better than what I believed what most other agencies would have provided them with, and I am almost wondering if their complaining is an attempt to renegotiate on their invoice -- something their owner is unfortunately keen on doing.)
Greatly appreciated,
Zack -
-
You bet. Hope that was helpful.
Thanks,
Zack -
You can't 100% control the snippet. Google owns the SERP experience, and in some cases their algorithm determines that content from your page will be a better snippet to show than your meta description. But in general, if your meta description contains the keyword being searched, and an appropriate length of content surrounding that, the chance that the meta description is used for the snippet is higher. Whether that will translate to a higher CTR though is not always the case, and since you can't include every possible search term in your meta descriptions, most of us prefer to focus on ones where we are getting a good number of impressions but not a great CTR. It's a prioritization thing.
-
I saw that but I thought it will remove url. Did not knew about cache. Thanks. will look
-
Thank you. My problem is how do I control what is being shown in snippet? I mean it is a long page with good content but I am not sure why google is picking breadcrumbs. I have changed meta description and will wait for results.
-
I wouldn't necessarily target the keywords for which you are already getting traffic. The purpose of your snippet is to help your listing stand out from the others around it, so it gets clicks. I would look in GSC for queries where you are getting impressions, and then check how your snippet looks for those, especially as compared with the other listings around yours. As well, I would also look for queries where you have a significant number of impressions, but not a good click through rate. That's another indication that your meta descriptions (or page content being pulled into the snippet) aren't compelling enough. You don't necessarily need for your meta description to be used as the snippet, but you do want your snippet to be compelling so it gets as high of a CTR as possible.
-
Hi there,
To chime in, have you also considered trying heading into Google Search Console > Removals to submit a request for Google to clear a cached URL? This may be all that's needed, without further looking into it.
Hope this helps.
-Zack
-
Thanks for the reply. Does this mean that I should rework on the meta description of the page and include the keyword for which I am getting traffic.
-
The meta description is not always used for snippets, depending on what keywords/phrases are searched. When the search term is not in the snippet, but is on the page (and "page" does include elements such as breadcrumbs, top navigation menus, etc.). The search engines will often show the verbiage on the "page" surrounding the search terms. But also, your meta description is pretty lengthy. So you might have better luck with a description in the 100-150 character range.
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
-
The particular page cannot be indexed by Google
Hello, Smart People!
On-Page Optimization | | Viktoriia1805
We need help solving the problem with Google indexing.
All pages of our website are crawled and indexed. All pages, including those mentioned, meet Google requirements and can be indexed. However, only this page is still not indexed.
Robots.txt is not blocking it.
We do not have a tag "nofollow"
We have it in the sitemap file.
We have internal links for this page from indexed pages.
We requested indexing many times, and it is still grey.
The page was established one year ago.
We are open to any suggestions or guidance you may have. What else can we do to expedite the indexing process?1 -
Client is not ranking on Google For Brand Name Search but is on Yahoo and Bing
We have a mobile app development client that recently 6 months ago changed their domain name to www.FSStudio.com. So they are concerned that they don’t rank on the first page for the brandname phrase “FS Studio” On Google. They do rank on the first page for this phrase in Yahoo or Bing. But why is Google returning search results for stuff like Free Studio? I know this fairly obvious question which the answers may be that they need more authority or backlinks because their name happens to be a fairly competitive search for stuff that is unrelated. Any suggestions? We are going to be optimizing and creating a lot more content. Is this just that they need to mention their name FS Studio more frequently throughout their website? Here is a screenshot from Moz’s Keyword difficulty and SERP Analysis tool. agwlY9i.png
On-Page Optimization | | vabmediaseo0 -
Why am I ranking on both Bing and Yahoo and yet the rankings are declining on Google
I'm seeing ranking go up on both Bing and Yahoo and yet they are going down on Google. I did see a bunch of spammy links show up about a month ago but have managed to get all those taken down although did not get any warnings from Google in Webmaster tools about them was more of a preemptive measure. The site in question. http://www.gocitrusnow.com
On-Page Optimization | | mwaters19790 -
Google cache tool help
This link is for the Ebay Google cache - http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.ebay.com&strip=1 I wanted to do the same for my homepage so I switched out the urls and it worked. When I try to get a different link in there such as mysite.com/category it wont work. I know my pages are indexed. Any ideas why it wont work for other pages?
On-Page Optimization | | EcommerceSite0 -
Google Authorship for SEO Content Writers
I am interested to know the best way to go about about Google authorship on blog articles written for a client. For example is it a bad idea for an SEO content writer to publish articles under their own identity, what are the potential footprint downsides to this?
On-Page Optimization | | Clicksjim1 -
Local search optimisation
One of the major keywords in our industry “fireplaces” is now viewed as a local search phrase & Google seems to be displaying website results that it views to be local businesses. We have 2 stores, and for some reason they do not appear high on the rankings despite us having a physical location near by... can anyone help? Also, we have a verified location on Google place, but even that doesn’t appear.
On-Page Optimization | | Ray_UK0 -
Google Penalty?
What are the characteristics of a Google penalty - i.e. how do you know by looking at the rankings for your keywords? Do all keywords that you had previously ranked for fall from say top 5 to nowhere? Do you disappear from SERP for a branded keyword? Or something else?? Basically how do you know if you have been penalized? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0 -
Google webmaster tools data update frequency?
What is the lag time for changes to a site to be reflected in Google webmaster tools Diagnostics section? They pointed out some duplicate titles which I fixed a week ago and yet they still show up as an HTML Suggestion. What has your experience been with making changes and then seeing them reflected in the HTML Suggestions section? My site is crawled every day, including the pages I have updated with new titles. Seems like it takes a while for the data to trickle into Webmaster tools, no?
On-Page Optimization | | scanlin0