Google Results page layout

Display full sentences not mid-sentence in results page

[humpingdan]

Have you noticed how sometimes when you search google that you get the perfect layout for your webpage,Your get your page title, then 2/3 lines of text which is picked up from your site followed by your directry listing!

This is great but what happens when instead of picking up a nice couple of sentences to display it picks phrases or short snippets of text to display that dont quite make sense but include you keywords?

Does anybody know what effects google's layout of search results?

[kibera]

Google will show the meta description from your markup, *provided* it contains an exact match somewhere in it to the search query.

e.g. - search for "foobar"
meta desc: "we sell foobars here"

google will NOT show the meta desc, but instead will pick up the next phrase on your page it finds with the exact match "foobar"

j