Google Site Description

[dunhill]

I have 2 Questions Please.

When I search on a couple of keywords in Google my Title appears OK, but the description under the title does not seem to be from my website, it seems to be from DMOZ, when I search on my keywords in Yahoo, it too doesn't show the description form my site but from the Yahoo Directory.

Is this an indication that there is something wrong with my site?

Also when I search on my main keyword I am nowhere to be found, I have the main keyword in my domain name and title, there are at leats 100 pages of unique Information, I have looked at all 90 pages of results in Google and can't find my site.

I am starting to get the feeling that I have done something really wrong on my site, my site is all hand built, I use PHP.

I do get hits from google, but mainly using obscure keywords.

Any help is appreciated.

[krakrazor]

That is normal behavior, how long has you website been up and what kind of SEO do you do?

[dunhill]

My Site has been online since Jan 2005, what kind of SEO do I do,hmmm

The keyword is in my domain name, in my title a couple of times, and used a lot of times on my homepage. The main keyword is repeated in the tital on all of my pages for example: About Widgets - Page Title"

I use H1 for the Headings which is also my keyword.

I don't know what else I need to do.

Any help assistance and advice is appreciated.

[Robert Charlton]

Both sort of normal, but a better explanation is in order. There's been a lot of public discussion with the engines about leaving page titles and descriptions alone rather than going to DMOZ or to the engine's own directory.

The engines counter that in many cases, pages either don't have titles and/or descriptions, or else the site titles and descriptions don't sufficiently match the query. In these cases, the engines substitute what they deem to be better matches.

In Yahoo's case, though, Yahoo always returns the Yahoo Directory title, if there is one, for your default home page. I feel that this effectively handicaps sites listed in the Yahoo Directory, because Yahoo Directory listings are company name only, generally not as attractive as your own title to click on.

For this reason, I recommend to clients that they not purchase Yahoo Directory listings, unless, eg, they're a hotel or a local service where they're likely to be discovered by crawl-down in the directory itself (I wonder what the numbers are on search vrs crawldown in Yahooo these days?).

While Tim Mayer at Yahoo has said on a number of occasions that Yahoo would stop returning the Directory title by default, this has never come to pass for more than a day or two. Write Yahoo a letter, or insist your listing be removed.

On Google, you can help your displayed description by tuning your meta descriptions page by page to reflect what the page is liable to rank on.