Google not using meta desription
-
I have seen several posts as to why google may not be using the meta description. The most common reason is that they found other text on the page that is more relevant. While I have seen this to be the case on some, most of the time it is not. Is there any way to alert the google bot that it is taking wrong info that would not be good to the user?
-
Try to use the header tags properly
Only one h1
a few h2
etc -
@zoooky Thanks for the info, I had the same problem.
-
There is no way to tell Google if it is using the wrong meta description as such. However it is possible to influence it.
Basically you have two options- Technical SEO - have a good look after the page layout and the quality of the HTML on the page. You may find it is a simple technical error such as JavaScript hiding text or incorrect use of headings.
- User intent - Review the user intent behind the context of the page, if Google sees it as not relevant you will be fighting an uphill battle.
-
Google rewrites meta descriptions for mainly 2 reasons.
-
The first reason is the poor use of meta descriptions to summarize the page.
-
The second reason is more accurately matching the search query or intent.
Unfortunately, there is not any alert option that tells google bot to show a predefined meta description.
-
-
@pau4ner Thanks. Yeah, that is what I was figuring. The problem is it is way off. For example my description could be:
Kolea at Waikoloa Beach Resort offers two and three bedroom vacation rentals on the beach.
Google is making it:
1BR , 2BR, Houses, Condos, and on and onIt is pulling info that makes zero sense.
-
Hi, there is nothing that can be done to "force" Google to use the metadescription. Just as with titles, Google can choose to honor or not the metadescription that you wrote.
However, I have found that using the exact same keyword you want to rank that post for increases the odds of Google using your metadescription. If the keyword consists of several words, make sure to use them in the same exact order in your metadescriptions.
I hope that helps!
-
It is always advisable to have a meta description of 150-160 characters. Anything beyond that will be truncated by Google.
Try restructuring your content in such a way that it fits within 15-160 characters
All the best!
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
-
Unsolved Has anyone noticed the Google quote request response rate never changes?
We respond to almost 100% of our quote requests, yet every quote email that comes in from Google shows a 27% response rate and it never changes. Has anyone else seen this or have any insight into it?
Local Listings | | r1200gsa0 -
English pages given preference over local language
We recently launched a new design of our website and for SEO purposes we decided to have our website both in English and in Dutch. However, when I look at the rankings in MOZ for many of our keywords, it seems the English pages are being preferred over the Dutch ones. That never used to be the case when we had our website in the old design. It mainly is for pages that have an English keyword attached to them, but even then the Dutch page would just rank. I'm trying to figure out why English pages are being preferred now and whether that could actually damage our rankings, as search engines would prefer copy in the local language. An example is this page: https://www.bluebillywig.com/nl/html5-video-player/ for the keywords "HTML5 player" and "HTML5 video player".
Local SEO | | Billywig0 -
Question regarding international SEO
Hi there, I have a question regarding international SEO and the APAC region in particular. We currently have a website extension .com and offer our content in English. However, we notice that our website hardly ranks in Google in the APAC region, while one of the main languages in that region is also English. I figure one way would be to set up .com/sg/ (or .com/au/ or .com/nz/), but then the content would still be in English. So wouldn't that be counted as duplicate content? Does anyone have experience in improving website rankings for various English-speaking countries, without creating duplicate content? Thanks in advance for your help!
International SEO | | Billywig0 -
Google not using redirect
We have a GEO-IP redirect in place for our domain, so that users are pointed to the subfolder relevant for their region, e.g: Visit example.com from the UK and you will be redirected to example.com/uk This works fine when you manually type the domain into your browser, however if you search for the site and come to example.com, you end up at example.com I didn't think this was too much of an issue but our subfolders /uk and /au are not getting ranked at all in Google, even for branded keywords. I'm wondering if the fact that Google isn't picking up the redirect means that the pages aren't being indexed properly? Conversely our US region (example.com/us) is being ranked well. Has anyone encountered a similar issue?
Technical SEO | | ahyde0 -
Missing Meta Tags - "thousands" using WooCommerce?
Recently took a site live for a client using WP/WooCommerce to replace their antiquated shopping cart site and have encountered thousands of "Missing Meta Description Tag" errors. Have researched and tried a couple different approaches, but nothing really seems to fix this problem. I'm happy to continue to research, but have never encountered this problem before. Anyone else encountered similar? If so, how did you fix? Which resources to start with? 2VKDRVx
Technical SEO | | twelvetwo.net0 -
Why did Google stop indexing my site?
Google used to crawl my site every few minutes. Suddenly it stopped and the last week it indexed 3 pages out of thousands. https://www.google.co.il/#q=site:www.yetzira.com&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:w&sa=X&ei=I9aTUfTTCaKN0wX5moCgAw&ved=0CBgQpwUoAw&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=cfac44f10e55f418&biw=1829&bih=938 What could cause this to happen and how can I solve this problem? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | JillB20130 -
Google Places Reviews
Has anyone had any delays on Google+ reviews to show up? We have multiple clients who have not received a new review in over two months. These are good accounts with good Zagat scores with 15+ good reviews from real customers. Our clients have asked their clients and have confirmed that there has been reviews left recently. However no new reviews have shown up in the past 60+ days.
Technical SEO | | CaseyKluver0 -
Google Shopping Australia/Google Merchant Centre
So Google Shopping has finally landed in Australia so we've got some work todo hooking it up to our client ecom sites. Right now we have a handful of clients who are setup, the feed is getting in their ok but all products are sitting in "disapproved" status in the dashboard and clicking into each individual product the status says awaiting review. I logged a support ticket with Google to get some more info on this as it doesn't look right to me (ie the disapproved status in dashboard) and got a useless templated answer. Seems that if I switch the country destination to US the products are approved and live in google.com shopping search within the hour. Switch back to Australia and they go back to disapproved status. Anyone having the same issue/seen this before? I simply don't trust Google support and wondering if there's other factors at play here.
Technical SEO | | Brendo0