Google description

Will i be banned for using scripts for this

[Richie]

I'm in the top 10 in google for most of the usual search phrases for the topic of my web site.

That's good but the description google provides is often the first line on the page, and it's the same text for every page because it's advertisment text. The page is split into columns. The left column is for advertisments, middle the actual content, and the right just some navigation. I always use text for advertisments instead of banners because it looks nicer and text links get more click throughs in comparison.

I'd like to use PHP to check if google is the visitor and if so just display the first paragraph of the actual content of the page at the very top of the page.

Is that ok or will google be likely to ban the site for it or something?

[Paul in South Africa]

IMO Google could view this as an attempt to serve up different content to them as opposed to visitors and could possibly result in a ban. ht*p://www.google.com/webmasters/faq.html

[AndyCyberAVS]

You could try playing with your tables,

If you have your ads down the left, have a blank cell at the top, and then in the second cell across have you main body text, then have your ads in the next row down, but so that the ads don't appear at the bottom of the page only, your main body text cell should be rowspan="2"..

This sould make the SE's think that the body text is first on the page, which it is...

Hope that this helps..

Andy

[JasonIR]

Richie, that's cloaking and could result in a ban.

[digitalghost]

Or you could use the table trick:

[delorie.com...]

Same trick explained better: [apromotionguide.com...]

Or you can go with a three column layout and CSS:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[nell]

You can use JavaScript (document.write) for anything you want to exclude from the spiders.

[Richie]

I can't be bothered changing the table structure or using JS because some users may have it disabled.

Google should use the page meta description imo >:¦

[Jon_King]

No offence meant, but then you can't be bothered with high rankings in Google.

[madweb]

Well, you *can* force google to display your meta description by not allowing googlebot to cache your page (hence preventing it from 'snippeting')

<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">

This may or may not have detremental affect on SERPs, from trying to search and browse here no-one seems to really know.

[nell]

>using JS because some users may have it disabled

For those users, include <noscript> tags to put in your menu </noscript>

[Mike12345]

<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">

I use this on a couple fo sites its good is your metas are upto sratch and your content is rubbish ;)

[Richie]

madweb, do you mean '<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOSNIPPET">'? I have put them both in.

Thanks for all your suggestions.

[Mike12345]

Oops, i miss read that, noarchive prevents cachin. lol! nosnippet is the badger yer after.

[vincevincevince]

use absolutely positioned DIV

that way you put your content div first in the output
then the left div, then the right div
as google parses the page, it hits content first
as users see the page, they see it how it normally is

[John_Creed]

You already stated that you have good placement. The wise thing would be to leave it the way it is.

Why mess with a good thing?