Why no Snippet?

G prefers the meta description.

[glengara]

When looking at "pages from the site", there's about 500 pages all with the sane title and description.

They use an untweaked CMS/DB, so each page has the same title and description.
The title thing I can understand, but the pages all have straightforward text, not in images/JS yet G prefers to show the meta description rather than a snippet.

If I use a snippet from a page in a "" search, G returns the page, so it has indexed the text.

Any insights into G's preference for showing the description rather than a snippet?

[ciml]

Normally, Google will use the META description if all the search words are in the META description, or if there are no search words (e.g. searching just for 'site:example.com').

[glengara]

*or if there are no search words (e.g. searching just for 'site:example.com').*

Someone had mentioned that, but it didn't seem to be so, I've just tried it now with this site, and every page displays a snippet rather than the description :-(

<added>

OK, WebmasterWorld pages don't have a desription to show, I'll go find another example...

[edited by: glengara at 11:17 am (utc) on July 8, 2005]

[ciml]

Could the search have been 'site:example.com example'? I still use that sometimes by habit, even though there's no need any more. If the domain name was in the standard META description then you could expect to see the META description instead of the snippet.

Sometimes, people see odd things though. I don't remember anyone explaining the DMOZ title+description that we sometimes see, so I don't know if Google are playing with the snippet rules too.

[Iguana]

ciml, for my site, the DMOZ title and snippet came up when I did a search that matched the title in DMOZ. If I searched for the site by its name I got the real title and meta description.

Currently I get the DMOZ title and my meta description when I search for the DMOZ phrase. It's quite easy to spot when DMOZ have a title that is nothing to do with your website name and you haven't used it for 4 years.

[glengara]

*Could the search have been 'site:example.com example'?*

No, I just typed the Url into G, and clicked on the "Find web pages from the site www.webmasterworld.com" option.

Obviously you need a page with both a description and text, but I've tried it with a few, and a snippet rather than the description appears to be the norm.

I could maybe understand a mixture of both, but all 500 pages with just the description is a bit odd, IMO.

[glengara]

I'm wondering if it could have something to do with their CMS, do we have a CMS/DB specialist in the Google forum?

[steveb]

Google Guy said they were experimenting with this. I don't think there is anything to consistently analyze.

[Crush]

we have 3 snippets for the same site depending on what you search for.

dmoz description, company name in the page title and sometimes meta.

Google is trying to be more relevant.

[glengara]

Right, but 500 pages without a single snippet?

There must be something specific to the site that is causing this, IMO.

[Marval]

agreed with steveb - Googleguy did mention they were experimenting with this approach to listings this summer

[glengara]

OK, they've a sister site that uses a similar template, same thing, not a single snippet.

Can't finger the how or why, but I'm now pretty convinced it's down to their new CMS/DB set-up.

Somewhat ironically your man said:

"We have gone through a major architecture change with the website and it has proven to be both technically and commercially very successful."

He's the IT manager, so it's likely his baby ;-)

[glengara]

Came across the same thing on another PHP site, though it was confined to the /store/customer/product.php?productid= section of the CMS/DB rather than the entire site.

Looks like I'm going to have to go over and talk to the Propellerheads ;-)

[glengara]

OK, seems the mystery is solved, I'd failed to notice they were using <meta http-equiv="cache-control" content="no-cache"> which of course would explain the no snippet thing :-(