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and, for some reason, the spider is reading alt text tags (in image links) on my site and using that as my website description instead of my description meta tag... wtf!
anyone know what up with this?
The bit about the description coming from your alt tags is interesting though. I have yet to see that happen with one of my sites...
Perhaps you could try shortening the verbage in the alt tags for your images to a word or two? That way, the engine will be forced to use some content from another part of the page as well.
The <meta name="revisit-after" tag was the invention of a lone search engine operator in Canada, many years ago, IIRC. It has never had any effect on any major search engine. They spider when they want to.
Which search engines are showing your ALT text - All of them, or just Google?
Jim
Their descriptions in the SERP are not always the meta description tag, but sometimes.
I've heard from others that a h1 or similar with your target keyword can make it so that Google shows that tag's content as your description...
Also, a listing in the Open Directory -> will show just below the 'ransom note style description' that Google uses, so that there is at least one line that is well written describing your site in the SERP.
Though that will only show on Google.com / and not Yahoo. For Yahoo, if the site is listed in their directoy, they will use the title / description from teh Yahoo Directory for your index page in their SERPs.
So there is a way around your problem -> just takes a bit of work & money can speed the process (with Yahoo, anyway).
The subpages, though...I'm afraid you may be stuck like the rest of us.
Yahoo is using Google's search index. Google does not use the <meta name="description" tag, because of its potential for abuse. Instead, they use a "snippet" of text from the body of your page. If you want better results in Google, you'll need to have search-keyword-relevant text in your page heading ( <h1> or <h2> ) and in - at the minimum - the first and last paragraph on your page.
As to getting spidered more often, there is a correlation between your page rank plus how often you significantly update your page, and how often Google's freshbot will visit. So get some more on-topic incoming links from high-PR sites if you want more attention from freshbot. This will also help to get your subpages well-indexed.
If your site is less than three months old, some of this may not apply - It takes awhile to get settled in Google's index.
HTH,
Jim
<added>jeremy types a lot faster</added>
Follow all that - and keep coming here for questions - and trust us, you will get spidered so much you won't know what hit your server. lol.
