danielm
msg:47223 | 7:53 pm on Mar 4, 2003 (gmt 0) |
Google has been using our Meta Description tag - not sure if that's the case for everyone.
|
jbauder
msg:47224 | 8:03 pm on Mar 4, 2003 (gmt 0) |
thanks daniel do you know if you have a dmoz or google directory listing?
|
Crow187
msg:47225 | 8:14 pm on Mar 4, 2003 (gmt 0) |
also Google will use your meta tags when you find your site thru a keyword that is only pointing to the page you found or when you look for the url itself.
|
jimbeetle
msg:47226 | 8:19 pm on Mar 4, 2003 (gmt 0) |
And also keep in mind that Freshbot usually pulls the 'new' material it found on the page as the snippet. I've found that it helps when making housekeeping changes to a page to also fiddle something in the main content in hopes that the changed content blurb will be picked up as the snippet, not the copyright, navigation, etc. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't. Jim
|
danielm
msg:47227 | 10:24 pm on Mar 4, 2003 (gmt 0) |
The site is recently listed in dmoz, but not yet in Google directory - this should change with the update (or the next), and then I'll see if it still uses the meta desc.
|
buckworks
msg:47228 | 10:59 pm on Mar 4, 2003 (gmt 0) |
Google often creates snippets which consist of the search word(s) used in the search, plus a few words before and after it. Sometimes these are attractive and informative; sometimes you wonder who spilled the alphabet soup. I'll bet that Google is showing your copyright notice because you searched for your page by your company name and the name appears in or near the notice. If you used a different search to turn up the page, the snippet would likely be different. Consider your main target keywords, and give thought to the text that surrounds them where they appear on the page, especially the first occurence. Tweaking the surrounding text can sometimes make quite an improvement to the attractiveness of the description snippet that Google gives you, at least for your most important terms. Google snippets sometimes show words from ALT tags and link TITLE tags, too, so if any of those are near your main target keywords (as seen from a spider's-eye view in your source code) remember to think about them too.
|
jbauder
msg:47229 | 11:02 pm on Mar 4, 2003 (gmt 0) |
buckworks ... yes indeed I did thanks a ton ... it is a new site and I was freaking out that the description wasn't going to make a whole lot of sense ... thanks much
|
JudgeJeffries
msg:47230 | 11:13 pm on Mar 4, 2003 (gmt 0) |
Googles snippet on my site read 'Powered by XXX hosting' which was the last entry at the bottom of the page, until I removed the italics.
|
jimbeetle
msg:47231 | 11:34 pm on Mar 4, 2003 (gmt 0) |
| until I removed the italics |
|
Very interesting. Google was using my quote of the day as a snippet -- above I attributed it to Freshbot since this was the only thing that changed on many pages -- and it was also in italic. Might plug the quote back in without italics and see what happens.
|
gilli
msg:47232 | 11:43 pm on Mar 4, 2003 (gmt 0) |
Is that italics using the <i> or <em> or css?
|
Tartan75
msg:47233 | 12:01 am on Mar 5, 2003 (gmt 0) |
for one of my sites, google likes to use in its description the text I have in <b>, even though its navigation. Perhaps google is showing a preferance for 'emphasised' text, such as italics, bold etc.
|
JudgeJeffries
msg:47234 | 12:29 am on Mar 5, 2003 (gmt 0) |
It was by use of <i>XXXX</i>
I also note use of the content of the H1 tag as athe snippet
|
johnraphone
msg:47235 | 12:29 am on Mar 5, 2003 (gmt 0) |
Yes, google loves "emphasised" text.
|
ciml
msg:47236 | 6:50 pm on Mar 5, 2003 (gmt 0) |
Google use the META description if it matches all of the search words, or if there's no indexable text on the page. Otherwise, it'll matches the page as has been mentioned.
|
|
