Do I have any control of which page google lists for primary keyword

[ChicagoFan67]

I have a subdirectory that ranks in the top ten for a primary keyword and another 3 subdirectory's ranking on the 2nd and third pages of results. But what I really want is for Google to display the Homepage instead. From my logs I can see that Google sometimes does return the Homepage instead of the subdirectory's, but when I go searching for it myself, I can never find it.

Will submitting a site map to google help?

[Quadrille]

No.

the page is already indexed; google will return the page closest to the term chosen by the searcher.

You could consider changing the content of the page; or gaining new links to that page, to improve it's standing in google's view.

But probably better not to worry; just be sure you have good navigation so that readers will find what they need. You cannot 'control' what Google offers; and inevitably some searches will not show the page you expected. Life goes on!

[ChicagoFan67]

"be sure you have good navigation"

I do, and I've worked out if I drop the meta description on the page and shuffle a couple of lines of text around, google's snippet may just pick up what it is the navigation. Is this allowed?

[Quadrille]

Unless you can be very sure what searches will be used by high spending customers, it's usually better not to try and fine-tune: for every individual search you make better, others will be made worse.

If you have good navigation, and a visitor arrives on 'not quite the page I wanted' they can move easily within the site, and nothing is lost. If you try to force the issue, a percentage of visors may end up confused and never be seen again.

Plus life really is too short; much better to put the effort into building yur site to be the best it can - not second-guessing a Google algo which may change tomorrow!