How does google select their descriptions?

[wanderlusty]

I've been trying to figure this out by searching on google and then trying to match the descriptions to the pages. But I must admit I'm utterly confused. Sometimes the description seems to match the meta description, but on one site it did not nor could I find the text anywhere on the page (including in source code) (the description was, however, apt for the page) I was even looking at the cached version.

Help!

[bluemi]

Hello wanderlusty, and welcome to the board!

What descriptions do you exactly mean? It might be that you are talking about the ones that are taken from the Open Directory (dmoz) listings. Google uses them for sites that are listed on dmoz. These descriptions are written by voluntary editors, so it is possible that in some cases you can't find the exact wording on the sites.

[pageoneresults]

Hello wanderlusty, welcome!

Actually what you are seeing is what we refer to as snippets. Google's descriptions are created dynamically on the fly based on your search query. The descriptions are never constant unless of course you have a Flash site and Google indexed your meta description.

bluemi is correct in regards to other descriptions you'll see in the Google SERP's. Those listings with descriptions and category links are coming from the ODP (dmoz.org) and are written by editors of the directory.

Rarely are you going to find descriptions matching the meta description as Google only resorts to displaying the meta when it cannot find any other text on the page. For example, Flash sites, those with nothing but graphics (no text), etc...

[wanderlusty]

thanks guys :)

in the search results there is often text immediately after the title (usually with ellipses) and then beneath that a line that says
"description: another description"

So is the first the snippet and the second what is pulled from dmoz?

I'm trying to figure out how to get a good description to come up. Will it make any difference if I set the page up so that the first text the browser will find through the html will be the description?

[wanderlusty]

what are Google's SERPs?

[agerhart]

SERPs = Search Engine Results Pages

[wanderlusty]

oh duh, thanks.

[Brett_Tabke]

[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

[andersja]

Just two quick additional questions:

1) I just spent the better part of last night tweaking my individual page descriptions to try to achieve the following results:

[jacobsen.no...]

Will it have any effect with Google? (I THINK it will work with alltheweb?)

2) Regarding META ROBOTS tags (see URL above further down in comments section): will putting META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, FOLLOW, NOCACHE" on category index pages result in reduced PageRank, or will it just achieve that searches arrive at the individual category pages directly?

Thanks for all your help & input! :-)