LegalAlien - 11:58 pm on Dec 13, 2005 (gmt 0)

trimmer80,

>>> I have however seen instances where the meta description is shown as a snippet when the keyword / phrase is on page. When this occurs the site never ranks for that phrase in Google. <<<

That's not true! Pre-Jagger had us 1-10 for around 10 very competitive 2 and 3 word phrases; all 50-200m results, all with the phrases in the meta description and body, every one displayed the meta description.

Post-Jagger we now rank #8 for one of these phrases (60m results). Our meta description is still displayed. This includes the key phrase, as does the body text. Other phrases are down between 2nd and 4th pages, but all (except 1) are still displayed with meta descriptions.

Usually, it's the other way round from what you stated - i.e. If G cannot find the exact phrase in the meta description, it uses a body snippet instead. However, there are occasions where it drops the meta description in favor of either a snippet, or more often your DMOZ description -- I previously believed this was when the phrase was too prominent in the meta description, but not prominent enough on the page itself (also if the meta description was too long), but I now believe this also happens when it's too prominent site-wide (i.e. title straps, etc.).

<edit>Clarified