Google Description & HTML

[tecnovate]

Hey Strange but I have seen on google that few sites show only 2-3 words as description in google NOT as usual 2 full line description.
Is this due to some problem in googlebot to read the HTML? or something else?

[jetboy_70]

As you may know, Google's snippets are pulled from the page content by preference, followed by the meta description, but only if the search terms are part of the copy.

One cause for what you've seen is if the search term is only contained within an image alt attribute. In this case only the alt text is shown in Google's snippet.

[jo1ene]

<meta name="description" content="Blah Blah Blah">

This is one reason that the description would be different.

Also, some sites don't have all that much readable prose for G to take. For instance, the page in question may be mostly graphical or have a lot of links and adds but no prose that has the search terms in it to display.

[tecnovate]

I agree, one more question:
Sometimes upon any search, google shows only links with no description content at all.
is this due to page not crawled properly?
or the portals' which use "CMS" (content management systems )they do have these problems?

[jetboy_70]

There are many reasons for no title/no description. As you've said, it could be that a site has only been partially spidered or pages cannot be spidered. It could also be that Google considers the pages to be duplicates of other pages on that site, or at least similar enough not to be worth listing them.

A CMS-driven site *should* not be any more or less prone to duplicate filtering by its nature alone, but code-heavy templates do seem to push you further towards tripping the dupe content filter, which is something to bear in mind.

[pageoneresults]

Sometimes upon any search, google shows only links with no description content at all.
Is this due to page not crawled properly?

This can also occur if the page is disallowed in the robots.txt file.

[Marcia]

They can also be URL only if they're in the process of being dropped out of the index or just first found.

>>show only 2-3 words as description in google

That can sometimes happen when people use a top graphic across the site to link back to the homepage with the identical keyword phrase in the alt attribute.

[Marcia]

Let me try to describe the HTML structure of one of a few sites I've seen with a problem. Done by a FP web designer, template sites all the same structure, just a different graphic look and feel.

Two tables - one on top: graphic in left TD, same alt attribute text across the site, linked to the homepage. And text in the right TD - identical across the whole site.

Then a second table after with global navigation in the left TD and a little body text and a few graphics in the right TD (with the graphics in an embedded table).

It seemed Google stopped short right at that top table - problem with the description snippet. Which I've seen happen with a few sites.

I did a little bit of work for that site on just a few of the pages. What I did was unlink the top graphic, pull that top right TD identical text off and replaced with unique H1 descriptive of each of the pages.

Then I pulled some text out of the second table right side TD, wrote and added a bit more text, and put it in a blockquote in between the top table and the second table. Plus added a bit of text below that second table.

There were then normal descriptions next time around for those particular pages. Then they put identical text on top right of the pages again. :)

[tecnovate]

Marcia,
I am grateful to you for taking time to reply to the problem in good detail.

However, got a bit technical. ;) (I'm not)