Meta Description Being Picked up from another site!?
-
Hi, when we search for a phrase (which is the most searched for phrase for our company) the meta description which is displayed isnt the one we set, and it hasnt picked it up from any text on the page.
The description is incorrect, it says we have an office in a city that we dont, and it just isnt a very good description generally.
What has been suggested to us by our website developers is that the description is being picked up by google from a website which lists companies details.
The description which is displayed on that website, is the same as the description which is shown for our company in the search results.
But is it possible for Google to ignore the meta description which is set in our homepage and the other text on the home page, and pickup the text from another website and use it as our description?
Many Thanks
-
I have seen this happen with sites that have been redirected. For example, I redirected site A to site B once - including all of the content from site A - and site B inherited the Titles and descriptions from site A for several months. It was very irritating because I didn't use the words anywhere on the page, and I was using NOODP and NOYDIR tags. I even told Google the site had moved in GWT.
Eventually it sorted itself out, but it made me see how difficult it must be fore Google to keep everything straight on so many sites with so many different site elements, especially when redirects are involved.
Both sites had content and were in the the same niche. Site A had stronger signals, and was a year older than site B. However, I wanted to redirect to site B for branding reasons.
I suggest you do some digging around to find out if any other site has been 301 redirected to your site. If so, did that content ever appear on it?
Good luck and let us know what you find out!
-
Yeah, I'd just go easy on directory links going forward. There's no clear sign you need to start cutting. I was just observing the pattern, for the most part.
-
If you're not under a Google penalty, I wouldn't bother getting the links & listings removed. I don't think they're hurting you. I expect that once you add NOODP NOYDIR the problem will go away in a matter of days.
-
Thanks for your replies,
I did think that, because all of the directories are picking up the same thing it must be somewhere, but I cant see it anywhere. Its not on our Google+ page as we have only recently set that up.
I will try the NOODP and NOYDIR
Should I contact these directories and ask to be removed? We've not asked to be on them.
Is it worth having the links from them?
Thanks for your help
-
You're also here with that description:
- http://www.top20.md/int/info/raworthscouk
- http://uk-directory.co.uk/United_Kingdom/England/North_Yorkshire/Harrogate/Business_and_Economy/Legal_Services/index.html
- http://www.the-arena.com/matrix_smartlist.aspx?sid=1164145
- http://www.inonesearch.com/?cid=00000522741
- http://www.lawyersdirectory.co.uk/law_links/Find-a-Solicitors/North-Yorkshire-Solicitors/index.html
FYI it'll probably help a lot if you add NOODP, NOYDIR to your meta robots like Pete says
Michael
-
I'm only speculating, because directories are the only place I seem to be able to find the text Google is using. It begs the question, though - if directories are all picking up that text, is it possible they're getting it somewhere? For example, your Google+ business listing?
I've never seen a description pulled from another site outside of DMOZ/ODP. I've seen rewrites by Google, but usually using content somewhere on the page. So, this is definitely odd.
You could try the NOODP meta directive. I have heard cases where it helps prevent rewrites (even if the source isn't the ODP).
-
Thanks for taking the time to have a look, its causing us a real problem. The description appears in the number one search term we want to rank for.
We haven't intentionally asked to be setup on any directories, I've asked to be removed form the best of yorkshire website but we've had no response and nobody seems to be keeping the website upto date.
Apart from changing the meta description to one which is more natural, what else can we do? How can we remove ourselves from directories if they dont reply?
Is it possible for the meta description to be picked up from that best of yorkshire website?
Thanks very much.
-
Huh... yeah, that text doesn't seem to appear anywhere on your site, and it's not on DMOZ, that I can find. You do have some directory links to your site using that description in the profile:
http://www.bestofyorkshire.com/category/services/
...but I've never seen Google go looking that far. Your META description is honestly a bit keyword loaded (it just looks like a string of keywords with commas to me) - if you made it more targeted and included your main keywords naturally, Google would be more likely to use it as is. For some reason, they're just not wanting to pick up your main copy.
You've got a mountain of directory links that all seem to be using some mix of your home-page copy, too. It could be that these are starting to look like near-duplicates and are devaluing your home-page content somehow. I'd diversify some of that and lay off the directories a bit, personally. That's probably not the primary cause, though.
-
Thanks for your help.
The search phrase in Google is 'Solicitors Harrogate'
You will notice that the description for our site is:
'Solicitors with offices in Harrogate and Knaresborough. Site details the available services, gives contact details, and includes a company history.'
But we don't have an office in Knaresborough, and I cant see anywhere that this text is in the website!
Thanks v much
-
Hi Daniel,
It happened that Google ignored the META description on a page and the text itself and used the text from the Yahoo Directory Project and another directory. But I haven't seen that happen for a while. Can you give some more insights in what URL we're talking about and what the keyword is?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Site Not Being Indexed
Hey Everyone - I have a site that is being treated strangely by google (at least strange to me) The site has 24 pages in the sitemap - submitted to WMT'S over 30 days ago I've manually triggered google to crawl the homepage and all connecting links as well and submitted a couple individually. Google has been parked the indexing at 14 of the 24 pages. None of the unindexed URL's have Noindex or follow tags on them - they are clearly and easily linked to from other places on the site. The site is a brand new domain, has no manual penalty history and in my research has no reason to be considered spammy. 100% unique handwritten content I cannot figure out why google isn't indexing these pages. Has anyone encountered this before? Know any solutions? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | CRO_first0 -
Is it problematic for Google when the site of a subdomain is on a different host than the site of the primary domain?
The Website on the subdomain runs on a different server (host) than the site on the main domain.
Technical SEO | | Christian_Campusjaeger0 -
Googlebot cannot access your site
Hello, I have a website http://www.fivestarstoneinc.com/ and earlier today I got an emil from webmaster tools saying "Googlebot cannot access your site" Wondering what the problem could be and how to fix it.
Technical SEO | | Rank-and-Grow0 -
Very strange: META descriptions not showing
Hello, Since Panda 4.0 has been launched, all of my optimized META description have been gone in Google.
Technical SEO | | MarcelMoz
A while ago, I posted a question about this problem here: http://moz.com/community/q/all-meta-descriptions-gone. I know about Google's own will to decide which META description will be shown. And also about unique content of the descriptions. All pages did have an optimized description before Panda 4.0 and there were no troubles at all, what tells me there is something else going on. I tested some things: Rewrote 50 descriptions to very uinique ones, only five got indexed. This tells me that duplicate content of the descriptions is not the problem (they have never been 100% duplicate, product type was a variable which was always different for each page). Removed cache in GWT and fetched again as Google, didn't help. I checked the pages I tested and they all have been indexed again without showing the optimized descriptions. More information: The first time I changed some META descriptions and fetched the pages again in GWT, Google picked up my new META descriptions and showed them. A few days later, most of them disappeared again (so Google is aware of the description but seems to ignore it). Some pages show the optimized description when I change my search query (only a few, mostly the optimized description never got shown) Technique is ok. Source code shows the right optimized description. META robots isn't blocking anything except NOODP/NOYDIR (always has blocked those). Websites using the exact same CMS, website template, META descriptions (style and build-up), do not have these problems I compared elements like place of description in source code, usage of meta robots, og:description, crawl-delay in robots.txt, and special characters in descriptions between websites that are showing optimized vs. website that don't show optimized descriptions. I can't find any connection. Something I noticed is a change is my Robots.txt file: my webmaster has added the following command:
Crawl-delay: 2 May this have to do with my problem? I guess it doens't. I did some research and there are more websites that are suffering this problem beside mine. This tells me it must be Google (and so Panda 4.0) that is responsible for this change. I realy want my optimized descriptions back. Does anybody have an idea what to do?
Thanks in advance. Marcel0 -
Phone Number In Meta Description
People are more likely to call us, than email us. However, if they're using a mobile device, there's a click to call button on that site. My question is this: google does not include our phone number in our meta description. I could try to get the description changed, but it doesn't seem like it would make that big of a deal for just the desktop site. Am I missing something about the importance of the phone number on a desktop site? Any experience with this situation? Thanks, Ruben
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup3 -
Missing meta descriptions from Google SERPs
Hullo all, I run an e-commerce website and hence have a lot of product category/sub-category pages to handle. Despite giving each of these category pages meta descriptions, in the Google SERPs, a lot of these descriptions don't show up fully. Rather, only half the text that I'd inputed as my meta desc. shows up; the other half has generic stuff from that page given. I've attached a screen shot to give you an example of what comes up in the SERPs. Could you please tell me what exactly is the problem? Is it a coding issue? Or has Google not crawled that page? Need help asap! Thank you in advance! aE9RKXJ
Technical SEO | | suchde0 -
What can I do about missing Meta Description for category pagest etc.?
On all my campaigns I'm returning high levels of 'Missing Meta Description Tags'. The problem with fixing this is they're all for category, tag and author pages. Is there a way to add a meta description to these pages (there are hundreds) or will it not really have any ranking effect?
Technical SEO | | SiliconBeachTraining0 -
How to turn WP site into Ecom site?
I have a couple of old wordpress sites that are old affiliate blogs. I currently sell products that are on amazon on these sites and sell quite a bit of volume. I have found a source and can afford the inventory to replace Amazon with my own product. So the dilema is how to turn these wordpress sites into ecommerce sites. The thing I am worried most about is that each site gets about 100-200 visitors a day for great buying keywords. I obviously don't want to lose my rankings. What are the options of turning a wordpress site into a store. I am not interested in plugins or some of the other solutions that make the store look very cheap and I would assume horribly convert. If you have inner pages ranking for keywords how does that work? Do the post pages become product pages? So to sum up I guess I am asking, what are the options that are of the higher quality that will also help me keep my rankings? Thanks
Technical SEO | | PEnterprises0