Did You Know Google Ignores Your Description?
Google has several ways of choosing what snippet it will use in search results. Quite often it will take your Meta Tag Description and use it verbatim. There are times when Google will use descriptions from DMOZ, BOTW, or other Web directories. This happens often when a webmaster doesn’t have a Description, but there are times when Google decides that the description in a directory is better. Recently, I discovered that Google is using text from a web page to use as a SERP snippet even if there is already a well-written and optimized Description.
The question is, when does Google decide to use your Description and when does it decide to use text from your web page?
I think Google probably has its algorithm set to ignore your Description when it can find text on the page that is better optimized and more relevant to the specific search query. For instance, here’s an example that I’ve found that illustrates how Google skips over the Description and uses text from the page instead.
Search for “DITY moving service” and about midway down the page you’ll see a listing for ditymovingservices.com. The snippet in the SERP is taken directly from the Description for the site’s home page. But search for “DITY move trucks” and on the second page of the SERP you’ll find the same website with a different snippet. The snippet for that SERP listing is taken from paragraph 2 of the website’s home page. Here’s the snippet:
Renting a Vehicle for your DITY move: You obtain rental equipment yourself and do all the work. Sources of rental equipment must be well-known rental truck …
There are other examples involving this website but to go over them all would belabor the point. Has anyone else noticed this policy of Google’s to overlook the Meta Tag Description on your web pages and use text from the page itself? Do you think it’s because Google is using keyword-based text from the page that it deems more relevant to the search query? Should we be concerned about this or is this more helpful to searchers?
10 Responses to “Did You Know Google Ignores Your Description?”
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Hiya Nick… it’s not that they ignore it really, it’s more that they decide what is relevant to the perceived query intent. Some times they use the meta-d when appropriate and other times it will be actual page text. So, they know it’s there… simply not always the chosen snippet. This should only increase as the whole Orion thing gains traction.
So your assertion that; “has its algorithm set to ignore your Description when it can find text on the page that is better optimized and more relevant to the specific search query.” – is pretty much how it works. We don’t generally have complete control.
ciao bro… cya on the trails!
@Dave – Thanks for stopping by! As you know, there are things that we sometimes can’t control, this is certainly one of them!
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Google first looks at the meta tag description, if the key phrase searched for is not in the description, then google pulls the description from where it is mentioned in the text on the page.
Hope that makes sense.
@Chris McElroy – Thanks for the tip, that makes total sense
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There are actually meta tags to direct the engine on which description to use.
You can use NOODP and NOYDIR
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Follow this link for the official goog resp.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsupport%2Fwebmasters%2Fbin%2Fanswer.py%3Fhl%3Den%26answer%3D35264&ei=0xbuScStEITQMrHPvfEP&usg=AFQjCNF5mIqnOa_fw3mENQvQCFfXa-sDhQ&sig2=NDAyI_2mPxWGKIkQAfU2qw
meta name=”robots” content=”NOODP”>
meta name=”googlebot” content=”NOODP, nofollow”>
@Josh Greenfield – Excellent information, thanks very much for taking the time to dig this up for everyone!
I agree with Dave, Google is not just ignore the description, may be some other factors involve in the above mentioned post by Nick. But description is one of the important SEO factor
@Zain Ansari – Thanks for the comment Zain…glad to see other folks agree!
Josh, thanks so much for including that article from Google. I was trying to explain to a client’s web master yesterday why I their site needed specific descriptions. When I meet with him in person, I can show him this article to back up my assertions!