Google showing only meta description of my pages

[dickbaker]

I was just checking the rankings for my site today, and noticed that for every search term I used, when I found one of my pages on Google, it was using the meta description from the page.

This wasn't so the last time I checked.

My rankings dropped by a couple of positions a week or two ago, but the pages are still #1 to #16 or so. They were better.

Rankings in the various datacenters are stable for some pages, and vary widely in others. (One particular page is #1 on one datacenter, and #8 on another).

Something is obviously happening, but I don't know what.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

[dickbaker]

I cannot believe that nobody else is experiencing this.

Please reply if you've been through this.

[pageoneresults]

I was just checking the rankings for my site today, and noticed that for every search term I used, when I found one of my pages on Google, it was using the meta description from the page.

Nothing unusual about that, I see it all the time with various sites under my watch. Many here are adamant that Google does not use the META Description, even after seeing proof to the contrary. Would you rather see Snippets instead?

[grandpa]

Would you rather see Snippets instead?

Personally, I like the snippets better. I've been more diligent about writing snippable content than I have been with my descriptions. Time to start looking over description tags.

[pageoneresults]

Time to start looking over description tags.

The rush is on! ;)

I like to think of this as a sound tutorial for building a META Description...

Building the Perfect Page - Part III - The Basics
Developing an effective META Description Tag. [webmasterworld.com]