Where did Google get my description?

[scottperry]

When searching for "office chairs" I come up #10, but the description is not on my site anywhere...are they editorializing the description on the result?

Wierd, any thoughs would be appreciated.

[bether2]

Check your meta description tag. Google often takes the "snippet" from there.

[directrix]

Have you tried googling Google's description of your site?

[victor]

A wide class of searches these days seems to return the DMOZ / Google Directory description rather than the traditional ransom note.

Search this site for earlier discussions.

[bether2]

By the way, if it's the site I think it is, your meta description needs a little spelling help - unless you're optimizing for misspellings. If so, oops, now everyone can see 'em.

[onefiddle]

A wide class of searches these days seems to return the DMOZ / Google Directory description rather than the traditional ransom note.

Google does this for my site. It's a good thing that the OPD description is pretty good.

[victor]

Googleguy mentions the issue here (message 4):
[webmasterworld.com...]

Even he's "not sure what the exact criteria are for using the meta description instead of a normal snippet"

[bether2]

Clarification:
scottperry's site wasn't the one I thought. His description came from ODP. No spelling errors. :)

[Dynamoo]

A couple of years back there was a snippet AND the ODP description which made much more sense. The ODP descriptions don't always make sense when taken out of the context of the directory category they live in.