Is it possible to define snippet content?

Forum Moderators: open

Message Too Old, No Replies

Is it possible to define snippet content?

kapow

6:31 pm on Nov 8, 2002 (gmt 0)

As I understand it the snippet is the bit of text from a site shown in the Google SERP.

The displayed snippet for some of my sites is rather unappealing and sometimes not descriptive at all. Is there a way to define or to influence what ends up in the snippet.

pageoneresults

6:34 pm on Nov 8, 2002 (gmt 0)

Wouldn't that be an ideal situation?! ;)

I've seen many topics concerning the Google Snippet and there really is no way to control it. Unless of course your design is all graphics and the only thing for Google to index is your META description which has been known to happen.

I have noticed that if certain presentational elements are the first tag after the <body> tag, that those become the first line in the sippet. It doesn't happen all of the time, but I see it quite a bit. The user's search query pretty much controls the snippet.

Henley

6:44 pm on Nov 8, 2002 (gmt 0)

Can't help on that particular point. Very interested to know the answer.
But here is something else on snippets.
Following the helpful comments on this forum, I added links from all my main framset pages in a newish website to the index of the frameset (two frames) but made the mistake of calling the links Business Widgets - Homepage. Much to my surprise two things have happened. Firstly the link text has become a prominent snippet in the Google Serps and secondly my index page has been replaced by the homepage alone for my principal search of Business Widgets UK. Not a major problem but I would have preferred the index page to come up first. The site hasn't been ranked yet. It will be interesting to see if the homepage is ranked higher than the index page.
Henley

europeforvisitors

10:22 pm on Nov 8, 2002 (gmt 0)

If you have an ODP listing, the ODP description will be displayed below the snippet. That won't make your snippet any better, but at least part of the search listing will make sense.

Robert Charlton

5:07 am on Nov 9, 2002 (gmt 0)

You can always run test searches for your main target terms and try to "tune" the snippets. It won't cover everything, by any means, but it could help with your main targets and peripheral searches too.

On one site I'm involved with, a "thanks to our sponsors" note keeps coming up with our most popular search term, and it's on my list of things to do to turn that into a graphic.