Controlling the description

How do I get what I want shown

[Gymonsear]

When my Google listings appear, erratic sections of that page appear as the description appearing under the title on the listing.

Where does Google source the description text from and how?

Can I control this?

Thanks to all who reply

[webnewton]

That's quite easy with Google but is relative to the keyword you're searching for.
While google shows your site in response to some search term it'll try to fetch in the description that particular search term/keyword. First of all it'll look for that search term in the meta description tag and if availabe fetch it from there or else will go down the body.
In case you dont' want it go down and fetch it from the body you might have to use the keywords 2-3 times in the description in a manner your want it to be read.

[dirty_marra]

we found that changing the "meta-description" worked for us.

[oshatz]

I found that on my sites, if there is an H1 tag on the page, then its content overrides the description meta tag.

So the solution - have a descriptive H1 tag.