Discription on Google search results

alt, meta discription or body text - how and why?

[Phil_S]

Google uses "alt text" or "meta discription" or "web page body text" for the discription on the web search results.

Anyone know how they make their selection?

If we can figure out how to MAKE Google use the "alt text", we can put a good discription there for web search results instead of showing a bunch of mumbo jumbo.

I think, this can be done IF you place an image (banner) first thing on the page with the search term in the "alt text" area.

Any feed back?

[annej]

It seems to me that if the search word or phrase is in the description then Google uses the description.

Anne

[Marcia]

It changes. I've had a phrase picked up out of an "alt" in the middle of the code and then the text that came right after. It looked like super marketing hype how they showed it.

Then, I've seen part of the meta description picked up - from the beginning, and then truncated after so many characters with the rest picked up in page snippets. It's actually kind of fun to play with a bit.