differences in google listings

description meta tag not appearing

[edsmith]

I have 2 sites I am trying to improve ranking on in Google. They are totally unrelated.

The first site appears in Google as I like, showing the title and description from my meta tags.

It also shows a description (the one that appears in open source directory) with a link below it to more Open Source directory listings.

The second site shows my title meta tag, but not my description meta tag. What is showing as the description appears to be what the google spider has read as the first words on the readable page.

This site does not show the additional description and category link back to open source, but the site is indexed in open source.

My question is why is this happening and how can I get Google to pick up the meta tag description for the second site?

[Updevision]

Good Morning

Google displays the most relevant part of the spidered page to display in the results page. GoogleBot has determined that your meta carries less weight than what it is displaying.

[edsmith]

Is there any way around this? Our description meta tag is much better, in my opinion, than what the spider has picked up, which is our phone number, email address and a headline.

[Shak]

try putting the "meta description" type text on the page as high up as possible (imo), making sure ti "include" your most popular keyword or phrase in the sentence if this is what you want to be found and listed under...

Shak

[edsmith]

The description meta tag is listed second under the title tag, so I don't think that is the problem.

The site was designed in Front page with a splash.html page referring to a welcome.html page. There's no true index.html page, like I'm used to working with. (the owner's family member designed the site). It has this elaborate table layout with front page themes. I don't design in front page, so am not really familiar with how it's programming may affect google indexing - any ideas?

Thanks!

[Richie]

There is the nosnippet meta tag which was fixed a month ago but now displays nothing (title, then url with nothing in between) so don't try that.