Description given by Google

Different versions in serps for the same site

[manilla]

I wonder if anybody can help me here.

I search on "widgets" and find the index page of a site in the serps, say it's - [domainname.co.uk....] It has the up to date description for the site, based upon the known description given in the Meta Tag.

I search on "blue widgets" and find what purports to be the same index page of the site, [domainname.co.uk....] This time the description is not picked up.

Both these results show fresh tags of 14 July 2003.

This is not a datacentre issue, as these results have been replicated many times over the last few weeks.

[Marcia]

Absolutely a great question, manilla! It's time we had another discussion about Google's descriptions and snippets, it's been a while since we had one. I love to try to figure those out.

The description (or snippet) shown is different depending on which search term is typed in when searching, that's why they're different. It's basically up to us to decide which words or phrases will be used to find our pages and give searchers and Google what they're looking for.

[edited by: Marcia at 6:35 am (utc) on July 16, 2003]

[Munster]

Google pulls its description from the text surrounding the keyphase for example,

Search: Blue widgets

The basic theory to keyword optimization is that each page should be as focused as possible on one or two keyword phrases, so the search engine will think it's highly relevant to those terms. Ideally you would create one page for each of your keywords and devote that page just to that keyword.

Google listing

Content and Keyword Density Optimization

... So ideally you would to choose one keyword or phrase for each page (ie blue
widgets) and make all those elements have the text "blue widgets". ...
www.redacorn.org/webdesign/keyword-optimization.php

This description was taken from the following paragraph on the target page

Here's a way to think about this - when Google is going through your site it is looking to try to figure out what each page is about. It does this by looking at a) the title tag, b) the <h1> tag, c) other onpage elements like body text and d) incoming text links. So ideally you would to choose one keyword or phrase for each page (ie blue widgets) and make all those elements have the text "blue widgets". So the <title> would be "Blue Widgets", on the page you would write <h1>Blue Widgets</h1>, you would mention blue widgets in the text several times, and you would link to the page on your other pages and/or from other sites with the link text of "blue widgets".

I hope this helps

Munst

[manilla]

I read what you say Munster, but I see a situation where we are only talking about *one* page, the index page, where we have embedded a title, "widgets", and description, "abc text".

When we search on Google using the word "widgets", the serps results shows the index page in fourth place and also the *snippet* "abc text", and below that the DMOZ/Google directory description - with the tag 14 July 2003.

When we search on other terms, *even* (for example)www.thedomainnamwe.co.uk, using Google, the *same* page is shown in first place, but this time, the snippet "abc text" is not shown at all - only the DMOZ/Google description - with the tag 14 July 2003.

These should show the same description shouldn't they?

[manilla]

Oh and the other thing is that in the first example it also shows *Cached - Similar pages* to the right of the 14 July 2003 tag, but in the second example it doesn't offer this!