Google and META Tags

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Google and META Tags

flashzeus

11:57 am on Jan 12, 2005 (gmt 0)

Check please:
on google does not show meta tags and description

Why?

picasso

2:50 pm on Jan 12, 2005 (gmt 0)

Don`t know exactly what you mean, but in the search results the decription is AFAIK only shown when the site is in dmoz.org.

river_east

3:09 pm on Jan 12, 2005 (gmt 0)

try reversing the order and run it thru a sim spider

description first

pageoneresults

3:27 pm on Jan 12, 2005 (gmt 0)

On google does not show meta tags and description.

Google does not show metadata in the context of the question.

Google does index metadata and may present snippets of your meta description and/or a complete meta description depending on the search query used and other factors.

Use your metadata as it was intended to be used and don't fret over whether or not it is being shown in a snippet.

Snippets are bits and pieces of copy from your page whether they be visible or in the html. Those snippets are constructed based solely on your search query.

taxpod

5:22 pm on Jan 12, 2005 (gmt 0)

Google does pick up the title tag. In your example, there is none. Presumably this is because it wasn't in the point you were trying to make but, if for some reason, you don't use title tag, you should. The title of the page including a good description should, obviously, be in the title tag, some header and text on the page, as well as, hopefully, some anchor text of inbound links to the page.

You do not need to be in DMOZ to get a description. But the description is usually just a snipet of text from the page usually with search terms bolded. If the page is in DMOZ and you search for that specific URL, you will get the dmoz description. But generally any page, whether or not in DMOZ, found as a result of keyword searching will include the snipet of text containing the keywords.

whoisgregg

8:38 am on Jan 17, 2005 (gmt 0)

in the search results the decription is AFAIK only shown when the site is in dmoz.org

I only now noticed the top three results for a particular search each shows their actual meta tag description instead of a snippet. Am I slow or is this new/unusual? (I won't feel bad if I'm slow, just want to know.)

macdave

11:46 am on Jan 17, 2005 (gmt 0)

The meta description is sometimes shown as the snippet, depending on whether it contains the terms being searched for, and (apparently) other factors. This has been the case for quite some time. However, it seems to come and go. A couple pages in queries that I follow sometimes appear with their description as their snippet, sometimes with text from the body of the page.