Google description confusion

[tyrojds]

My site recently was picked up on the Google radar screen, however, I am utterly perplexed by the accompanying descriptions. With almost each page, where a description should be, there appears an irrelevant, almost meaningless phrase taken somewhere randomly from the text. In one case the very last sentence, a credit to the logo designer, serves as the 'description.' I thought my carefully written meta tags were supposed to inform what appeared. Anyone else have that problem, know why it happens, or know how to remedy it? Info greatly appreciated.

[TWhalen]

Google pays no attention to your meta tags, only your Title tag.

The only time Google uses your meta description tag is when you have no text at all on your page. (and no text on your page, means no rank in Google at all (99% of the time...)

What you are seeing used as your description in Google is what everyone on these boards affectionately call a "ransom note" description, which is a random sampling of text taken from your site which is relevant to the keyword search you are performing.

[tyrojds]

Thanks. It's good to know I'm not alone. But where's the relevance if the site is about used widgets, and the 'description' says only, "logo designed by Jane Doe?" And how do the majority of sites get accurate descriptions? I'll never get this stuff!

[TWhalen]

Just a tip - if you put the site you are talking about in your User Profile as your "home page", then others here can check out the site you're talking about and better help you...

:)

[Quinn]

Make sure that the keywords you are targeting aren't right next to words which you don't want google to pull for the description. Funny you bring this up because I just now changed

"keyword Bookmark this site"

so that it reads

"<relevant word> keyword <relevant word> ............Bookmark this site"

[Marcia]

Ditto what Quinn said. tyrojds, that's one of the factors in preparing pages for Google, trying somehow to watch what other words the search phrases on a page are close to. Occasionally the meta description's been seen used, and I've noticed keywords in the alt attribute for images being included in the description.

It's a mystery how they come up with it, but it can be bad, as you mentioned, with the copyright, contact info or date modified coming up, or it can accidentally come out like ad copy. One is now reading

"important keyphrase anotherword $9.99. WOW!..."

The important two word phrase happens to be in an alt tag in about the middle of the page with the others regular text right after it.

[tyrojds]

Thank you for the suggestions. I've put my site in my profile and ask only, if anyone should care to go there and comment, please, be gentle with me!

Best,

t

ps, i'm also puzzled why no backward links are evidenced; i have about 12 or 15.

[Quinn]

tyrojds,

You may want to do a site search on webmasterworld, on anchor text and keywords relevancy. Then re-examine the anchor text on the links at the very top of your home page.

And your backlinks may not be showing because they are lower than a PR4.

Cheers,
Q

[sun818]

It is difficult to find a predictable pattern. If we take blue widgets as an example, I do see two patterns:

1. If blue widgets appears within the first ~140 characters of the web page, the snippet will display blue widgets and all preceding text.

2. If blue widgets appears again within ~70 characters of the previous blue widgets, the snippet will be a continuous: i.e. no .... I think for snippets, Google gives priority to the phrase blue widgets before the individual search terms blue or widgets.

[edited by: Marcia at 8:47 pm (utc) on Oct. 11, 2002]
[edit reason] formatting problem [/edit]