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Googles listing description
Hello,
I have a site that for some reason I just cant get google to index and display the meta description content. When ever I search for my keyword the site features at number 1 (great) but the black text description is just an odd collection of words from the body text.
Is there anything I can do to prevent this... as I said its not really an issue of ranking rather than I think I would get a better click through if the description of the site made sense.
Any help greatly appreciated.
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Below is the copied top part of the code from the page...
I have remove the acutal text and keywords to avoid people thinking im trying to get visits to the site.
Can anyone spot any issues from this?
Code:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head><title>My title text is here and diplays fine.</title>
<meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache" />
<meta http-equiv="cache-control" content="no-cache" />
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="verify-v1" content="vsYy+r5xm2IwDLeRXE7sqHvZ9/9OoFNde9irHizEG2s=" />
<meta name="Robots" content="index, follow" />
<meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days" />
<meta name="keywords" content="I have about 6 keywords in here." />
<meta name="description" content="I have a description in here about 20 words long and nothing is being displayed in google." />
<link rel="Shortcut Icon" href="/favicon.ico"></link><link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/main.css" type="text/css" media="all"></link><link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/slimbox.css" type="text/css" media="all"></link><link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/thickbox.css" type="text/css" media="all"></link><link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/moodalbox.css" type="text/css" media="all"></link><link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/mootabs1.2.css" type="text/css" media="all"></link><link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/jd.gallery.css" type="text/css" media="all"></link><script src="/js/swfobject.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="/js/openwind.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="/js/functions.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="/js/datepicker.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="/js/browsersniff.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="/js/mootools.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="/js/jd.gallery.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="/js/mootabs1.2.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="/js/tiny_mce/tiny_mce.js"></script>
<link href="/css/home.css" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/print.css" type="text/css" media="print" />
</head><body>
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Thanks,
yeah i dont actually do the coding so i wasn't sure these were doing much... do you think these could be the issue?
I know the site did not actually have anything in the description tag for a long time (its managed via a CMS and the field was empty) so im guessing google had no option but to use text from the body of the site... do you over time they might revert back to the meta description?
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okay everyone, thanks for the advise some great info.
I will look at cleaning up the code and then play the waiting game and see if they revert back.
Thanks again everyone, really appreciate people taking the time to comment.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by blueaardvark
Hello,
I have a site that for some reason I just cant get google to index and display the meta description content. When ever I search for my keyword the site features at number 1 (great) but the black text description is just an odd collection of words from the body text.
You know buddy as far as i understand your question, you cant manipulate it. If Google see the phrase/words/terms inside your <body>/content then it will show a snippet of your <body> where the phrase is found and bold it.
Fixing/cleaning of your code will not solve your problem
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yeah i think you misunderstand, its the meta description as a whole that they are not showing even though there is one now. Im not bothered about whether keywords or phrases are being highlighted or even if they use the description at all for ranking. I think the best thing about the meta description is just as it should be, to describe the site more effectivly than google taking random parts from the body text out of context.
thanks
Last edited by blueaardvark : July 14th, 2008 at 09:23 AM.
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woah, i appoligise it was me who misunderstod your comment Morph, i thought you were thinking i was expecting to be able to influence what google highlights!
Must admit i was under the impression that if a description tag was there that they would display this? am i wrong in this then?
E23CRAWL - a misunderstanding, of course i want to listen to the answers.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by blueaardvark
woah, i appoligise it was me who misunderstod your comment Morph, i thought you were thinking i was expecting to be able to influence what google highlights!
Must admit i was under the impression that if a description tag was there that they would display this? am i wrong in this then?
E23CRAWL - a misunderstanding, of course i want to listen to the answers.
If the search term appears in your meta description google will display the meta. If not google will display a snippet. Do you have a DMOZ listing. Google may be displaying your dmoz description. To solve this add this to your metas <meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOODP">
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Quote:
Originally Posted by blueaardvark
woah, i appoligise it was me who misunderstod your comment Morph, i thought you were thinking i was expecting to be able to influence what google highlights!
Must admit i was under the impression that if a description tag was there that they would display this? am i wrong in this then?
E23CRAWL - a misunderstanding, of course i want to listen to the answers.
Morph is right. Where ever in the content or description, Visitors searched keyword is, that is given the prime preference in snippet. Its not always that google will show your description.
Have you ever tried your sites instances, the first one from homepage, does this shows your description or the snippet containing your homepage URL.
Try this site:www.yoursite.com
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As mentioned earlier, thanks for everyones replys, i really do appreciate peolple spending the time to post. Hopfully i will gain the knowledge to help other in the future.
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