Forum Moderators: rogerd
How long does it take for someone to craft a short quality meta description for their pages? Particularly your home page?
Come on already. You want some link love? Then freakin give me an easy way to access a description of your site like using a meta description at least for your home page.
I'm tired of having to search for an about us page, which there usually isn't one. So then I go on a search for the first blog post to see if I can locate something there. Good luck on that quest too. And even then, I usually end up writing one myself by piecing bits from the <title> and possibly a tagline if there is one.
Come on now, what gives? Is the meta description just a waste of your time? If so, what about an "about me" page?
P.S. And for those of you who think one or two posts a month is a Blog...
Title tags are the only required tag nowadays.
Not so.
Google, yahoo etc do just what you're complaining about on their own very easily.
Actually Google does an excellent job of displaying meta descriptions word for word if they are relevant. ;)
IMO A title tag is critical with todays major engines, the others aren't and in fact the others can hurt if not done properly.
I've found that pages without description tags still get descriptions added in Google results. I've also seen google skip text and pick out some very relevant phrases from further down a page.
The title is correct as is the link. Google grabbed some text from fairly near the top of the page as the description which happened to include the page title and line of text just after, it skipped over a "welcome" sentence to get it. In the middle of the description though are the words "reply with quote" which isn't written on the page at all, it's the alt text from the reply button that I inadvertantly hadn't made invisible to non members. The image isn't supposed to show up unless logged in as a member with reply permissions but I hadn't "SEO'd" it before google visited.
Apparently google can grab alt words too.
We agree to disagree. (That doesn't mean i'm saying dump all tags).
Hmmm, I took your statement above as meaning that no other elements are required except the <title> element?
IMO A title tag is critical with todays major engines, the others aren't and in fact the others can hurt if not done properly.
IMO, the title element is the single most important element of a quality web page and always has been. The meta description adds to the quality of that page.
I've found that pages without description tags still get descriptions added in Google results.
Yes they do and you leave it up to chance. Use a properly formatted meta description element and take control of those snippets.
I've also seen google skip text and pick out some very relevant phrases from further down a page.
This is the default behavior of most search engines. But, you do have some control over what they are grabbing and displaying as a snippet. ;)
Title is mandatory. Meta tags are helpfull but not critical imo.
You can control the descriptions, and if done properly your site will benefit but... and its just a thought... leaving google to pick its own descriptions and other meta tags may "possibly" be beneficial to some webmasters. If you control the meta tags you have to hope google agrees with your choices. On the other hand if google does that for you then you know google agrees with its choice. Food for thought anyway. I'd like to think its better to control them but I don't know, i've seen some strange things.
Since we can't see the algos of search engines theres always a risk of getting it slightly wrong.
