Google showing content from top of the page instead of meta description

[AwadGorg]

SEO Related Not issue. I will say I have this website page`<https://example.com/red-widgets>` that has a little description on the top header of the page and I noticed that google uses the site description at the header of page instead of my meta description tag...... but header kind of not related to the page, so fewer people will click from search.

I got this idea of using if statement to make the description at the header dynamic instead of a description of the site at all page will make a description of the page will this be better, or I should just leave it.
<snipped poster request to look at site>

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 11:06 am (utc) on Dec 1, 2019]
[edit reason] removed specifics, per forum charter, and fixed formatting [/edit]

[Robert Charlton]

Hi awadGorg, and welcome to WebmasterWorld. I'm sorry the posting guidelines in our Google SEO News Forum Charter [webmasterworld.com...] don't permit public site reviews (for the protection of everyone here), so I've needed to remove your domain name and search terms and replace it with example.com and anonymous phrases like red widgets, etc....

But the issues in your question are clear enough that think we can help you without your site's specifics. You wrote....

I got this idea of using if statement to make the description at the header dynamic instead of a description of the site at all page will make a description of the page will this be better

Yes, if I'm understanding you correctly, it's sounding like you currently have a single meta description serving all the pages on the site, and you think that an approach to change that dynamically would be better. I think so too.

While Google has refined how it treats page titles and descriptions over the years, it's been extremely consistent in wanting descriptions customized for the page, not one-size-fits-all.

Here are Google's general guidelines for titles and descriptions....

Create good titles and snippets in Search Results
[support.google.com...]

Note that Google uses an algorithm for choosing material for the title, and there are several ways of handling different problems. I'd give the whole "How snippets are created" section and what follows it several reads.

Eg... w/my emphasis added, they suggest...

Meta description tags: Google sometimes uses <meta> tag content to generate snippets, if we think they give users a more accurate description than can be taken directly from the page content,

.

I suspect, if you have specified a single meta description for your whole site, that Google might use this as a signal that you weren't paying much attention to the aptness or uniqueness of your descriptions... and they will simply look at other signals first. These include onpage content, link content to the site, perhaps certain "authoritative" directory listings, etc. Very possibily , AI is now involved.

Google does give you some manual control, including a nosnippet meta tag and variants for more precise onpage controls, though I'm not precisely how that might affect the content you're presenting. It may suffice for what you need.

Here's a good summary paragraph, but doesn't cover all possibilities....

Differentiate the descriptions for different pages. Identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site aren't helpful when individual pages appear in the web results. In these cases we're less likely to display the boilerplate text. Wherever possible, create descriptions that accurately describe the specific page. Use site-level descriptions on the main home page or other aggregation pages, and use page-level descriptions everywhere else. If you don't have time to create a description for every single page, try to prioritize your content: At the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your home page and popular pages.

In my experience, dynamic descriptions can work very well on large sites, but they do need to anticipate most likely search queries you might get, and they can be a lot of work. Clever templating can help when you set these up. Google's article contains other suggestions as well when sites are very large.

Note that exact matches and synonyms are getting bolded these days in serps, so, while descriptions don't affect rankings specifically, the bolded query terms in the serps may attract searchers' eyes and prompt greater click throughs.

It's late, so I'm skipping over title and description length for now, but they are things I like to pay attention to.

Note also a common mistake in the use of descriptions. Descriptions are not considered body content of a page, so description vocabulary that is not echoed or reflected in actual body content html may not rank, and may not, in fact, be seen by site visitors.

Hope this helps.


PS: Fixed typo.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 3:24 pm (utc) on Dec 1, 2019]

[tangor]

@AwadGorg ... Welcome to Webmasterworld!

G does have some guidelines on meta descriptions, which Robert posted the most important, but experience shows that even when following these suggestions g SOMETIMES (and we don't really know why) will chose to use on page content instead of the meta ...

MOST of the time g will use your meta descriptions, when when they don't there's not a lot one can do ... except try something a bit different.

[not2easy]

If by chance this is a WordPress site, it can default to using the "Site Description" depending on theme and plugins and settings. This is the main reason that the Yoast plugin gained so many users when they first offered a way to customize the meta descriptions. There are other CMS packages that use templates the same way, so see what is there before deciding where and what (and whether) to change.

Before making changes, look at the source code for your pages - not just the home page - and see what Google sees there. IF your pages do not have one static meta description tag and each page does have a description of what that page is about, then I would not start making site wide changes.

[AwadGorg]

first this is not WordPress website second I already have a meta description for all of my pages but google decided to use the info from my website header for almost all of my pages insted of the ready to use meta description

[not2easy]

first this is not WordPress website

Sorry, but if we don't ask we don't know. Google is known to use content that is not in the meta description tag, as discussed in the topic that Robert_Charlton linked to above.

If by any chance the information from the top of the page that they are using instead of your meta description is within <H1 html tags, that can cause Google to have a confused reading of your intent.

When you mention using an 'if statement' that depends on how it is used which is not clear.

[Robert Charlton]

not2easy wrote...

When you mention using an 'if statement' that depends on how it is used which is not clear.

AwadGorg, yes, not2easy makes very important point... and I also agree with her that your question can be read several ways. I'll repeat the question and clarify the answer I posted...

I got this idea of using if statement to make the description at the header dynamic instead of a description of the site at all page will make a description of the page will this be better

As I reread this, I'm seeing it's not clear which "description" you're talking about... and I may well have misinterpreted.

What I was thinking that you wanted to do was to make your meta description dynamic... and by dynamic I interpreted that to mean that you would automate the process of making the descriptions different for each page and relating more closely to the content of each page. If your site is large, that is pretty much what Google suggests in the help article I linked to.

As I re-read it this time, I think you might be suggesting that since Google isn't using your meta description, and is instead using content from your "header" area, you should perhaps make the header content dynamic. Here in part it depends on finer details of what you mean by dynamic.... In my experience Google does look at the meta description first, and that's what I'd adjust first.

If Google doesn't think that the meta description is suitable for the page, though, it will then look elsewhere... eg, often starting with the content at the top of your page as the next most important thing, or sometimes instead looking at content that links to that page.

So, the meta description is really your best place to start, but there may be reasons why Google doesn't go with your meta description.

As mentioned, Google strongly prefers that the meta description be unique to each page. On the Help page I quote, I point out that Google also doesn't like "identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site". This suggests that the best place to start would be to see if your sitewide meta descriptions are the same or different, and if they are the same, to change each meta description so it is unique to each different page... ie, that they are all different from one another.

With very large sites where there are too many individual page meta descriptions to write manually, descriptions can be generated "dynamically" in a variety of ways, usually using pre-planned templates with blank spaces that (to oversimplify) can be filled in by material kept for this purpose, in a database keyed to the content of the page.

Your page content and words or phrases in the description both refer to the same targets you have "anticipated" for the page.

It's important to understand that the material that you want Google to display in the serps must be pre-coded into your pages before Google spiders them, so, and this is important, it must not be dynamic in the sense that it is reacting to the *query* that the page is returned for.

To change the content in response to the query, either in your meta desription or in your header, would be cloaking... a longer discussion. You must anticipate the core words or phrases your page will rank for, and use those onpage.

Your quoted paragraph above can be read also to suggest that you might make some material in your "header" dynamic. But, as noted, Google looks at the meta description first... then compares it with the page content, your inbound links, and the rest of your site.

When I manually optimize a page, I never put a sitewide paragraph repeated in the header describing the site. I have an introductory paragraph instead about the particular page, and both that paragraph and the meta description on each page are similar enough, but with differences, that I'm generally happy with the description Google gives it. If you want to rewrite your headers too, that would be a great thing to do, but rewrite your meta descriptions first.

It may also be that your pages are too much alike in other ways, and Google is doing its best to differentiate them.

Note, btw, that the "nosnippets" meta tag, all by itself, as the Google article describes, may solve the problem, but I think a deeper approach might be worth the effort.

Hoping this makes sense.


Edited for clarification

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 12:38 am (utc) on Dec 5, 2019]

[Robert Charlton]

PS: Some further clarifications about terminology... Re content in your "header", I'm assuming that you're referring to the onpage content, in the body section of your code, displayed to the site visitor at the top of your page.

I'm distinguishing this from the meta description element (also called the meta description tag), which is located in the <head> section of your code, and is not visible to the site visitor viewing your page.

What Google displays on the SERP (search engine results page) is called the "snippet", and might be pulled from your meta description, or from your onpage content, or from another source.

You should take care of the meta description in your <head> section, making it "page-appropriate" rather than "site-appropriate", and do this before you take care of visible onpage content in the "header" section at the top of each page.

It doesn't make sense to me to try to fix the inadequaces of the meta description tag by adjusting only the onpage "header" content, and assuming that Google will make the same substitution in your "snippet" as it does right now. The snippet is query dependent, and Google might, or it might not, make the substitution you're hoping for in the snippet it displays on the results page.

Ideally, the meta description and the header content (which both should describe your page, not your site) can be made representative enough of what's on your page that Google will generally display your meta description. Additionally, if both the meta description and the header relate to your page, it's more likely that Google will find enough useful content in one or the other that you won't be completely unhappy with the snippet.

Dynamic adjustments can be made when you code your page... prior to spidering... but not in response to Googlebot, which (oversimplifying here) would be "cloaking".