SERP display switching between normal meta description and 15+ items
-
The site, www.myrtlebeach.com has been having an issue with the way it displays in search results for the keyword "Myrtle Beach hotels". It is showing as a bulleted/itemized list similar to what's mentioned in this Moz article
I'll begin with a little background. When I started working with the site it would display in SERPs as:
Myrtle Beach Hotels - Reviews, Deals, & Photos - MyrtleBeach.com
www.myrtlebeach.com/hotels/
70+ items - Compare Lowest rates & see reviews on Myrtle Beach Hotels
from $76. Holiday Inn Club Vacations Myrtle Beach - South Beach offers a ...
from $27. Located among the south end Myrtle Beach hotels, Holiday Sands ...We did not want the site showing as an itemized list with 70+ items. We wanted it to show with the meta description we provided.
Our first attempt at getting the SERP to display our normal meta description was to simply change the meta description. That didn't work.Our second thought was to use pagination to reduce the number of items on the page. A few days after we implemented pagination we saw our normal meta description displaying in the SERP. Shortly after that we saw the SERP had reverted, but this time was showing 15+ items rather than 70+. This is when began seeing the SERP display change between a normal meta description and 15+ items.
In another effort to stop the 15+ items from displaying in SERPs, we added relevant blog content like "Top 10 Oceanfront hotels" and "Best Kid Friendly Hotels" to break up the hotel listings on http://www.myrtlebeach.com/hotels/. Again, our normal meta description displayed in the SERPs for the next few days, but shortly after reverted back to 15+ items. Since then we have been seeing the SERP switch between our normal meta description and 15+ items with no rhyme or reason. Because our listings are not using
-
, I'm not really sure why the site would be displaying this way.
Since I have been regularly monitoring the SERP for the keyword "Myrtle Beach hotels", myrtlebeach.com/hotels/ has ranked as high as 5 and as low as 10. I open an Incognito Window and I take screenshots almost daily. I then record how the site was displayed in the SERP and its rank. I also look at organic visits and a Value Per Entry metric I've created. (I looked at Value Per Entry to determine if someone seeing 15+ items was more apt to convert)
Average Visits on days with a normal meta description - 182
Average Visits on days with itemized 15+ description - 174Average Value Per Entry on days with a normal meta description - 131
Average Value Per Entry on days with itemized 15+ description - 120Average Rank on days with a normal meta description - 7
Average Rank on days with itemized 15+ description - 6This data shows that performance is better on days when the normal meta description is displayed regardless of rank.
I have linked 2 screenshots for reference. The 2-6-14 screenshot shows the SERP display with 15+ items and the 2-7-14 screenshot shows the SERP display with the normal meta description we provided.
My questions are:
1. How does Google determine if a site should display in SERPs with an itemized or bulleted list?
2. Is there something else I need to change on myrtlebeach.com/hotels/ to prevent it from displaying in SERPs with 15+ items?
-
-
I wish I had a good answer. When Google takes liberties with snippets, it's not always easy to sort out why. The first stop is usually making sure the query is in the META description and the description isn't too long, and you've got both of those covered. Two long shots, but easy to try:
(1) Add the NOODP Meta Tag (). Sometimes, it prevents not only descriptions from the Open Directory Project, but also Google taking liberties. Sometimes.
(2) Consider pulling your domain name out of the META description. You're saying "Myrtle Beach Hotels" twice in both the title and META descriptions, and it's possible that that looks very slightly spammy to Google. If you can, make the description slightly more natural - the length is about right.
Again, these are in no way guaranteed, but they're easy to try. I don't think tweaking the structure of the page is going to help. It's not Google recognizing the search results that's a problem - it's why they choose to rewrite. Unfortunately, we don't have a good handle on the why, at least in some cases.
-
Thanks Vadim,
I actually mentioned that same article in the beginning of my post. It helped me understand that
- and
-
Dr. Pete in this article should provide some answers, food for thoughts, and hopefully a suggestion:
http://moz.com/blog/how-do-i-get-googles-bulleted-snippets
Hope this helps!
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
-
Is it normal for Bing rankings to fluctuate so much on a daily basis?
Hi all, I launched a new website in Aug 2015, and have had some success with ranking organically on Google (position 2 - 5 for all of my target terms). However I'm still not getting any traction on Bing. I know that they use completely different algorithms so it's not unusual to rank well on one but not the other, but the ranking behaviour that I see seems quite odd. We've been bouncing in and out of the top 50 for quite some time, with shifts of 30+ positions often on a daily basis (see attached). This seems to be the case for our full range of target terms, and not just the most competitive ones. I'm hoping someone can advise on whether this is normal behaviour for a relatively young website, or if it more likely points to an issue with how Bing is crawling my site. I'm using Bing Webmaster tools and there aren't any crawl or sitemap issues, or significant seo flags. Thanks dhYgh
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tinhat0 -
Duplicate Page Due To Website Display Function
Hi Can anyone help with how I can rectify a duplicate issue? A high priority on my Moz report shows a duplicate issue however, this is due to the way the website is structured. For example. the below duplicate is created due to the website having a function to display all trips, so customers do not need to search page by page i.e: http://www.bikecation.co.uk/categories/cycling-climbs http://www.bikecation.co.uk/categories/cycling-climbs/page/2?showall=1 My question is, Will this format damage the SEO for this page? Is there a way to rectify? Would a canonical tag work in this case? Many Thanks Claire
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Strateji0 -
Pull meta descriptions from a website that isn't live anymore
Hi all, we moved a website over to Wordpress 2 months ago. It was using .cfm before, so all of the URLs have changed. We implemented 301 redirects for each page, but we weren't able to copy over any of the meta descriptions. We have an export file which has all of the old web pages. Is there a tool that would allow us to upload the old pages and extract the meta descriptions so that we can get them onto the new website? We use the Yoast SEO plugin which has a bulk meta descriptions editor, so I'm assuming that the easiest/most effective way would be to find a tool that generates some sort of .csv or excel file that we can just copy and paste? Any feedback/suggestions would be awesome, thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | georgetsn0 -
How long does google take to show the results in SERP once the pages are indexed ?
Hi...I am a newbie & trying to optimize the website www.peprismine.com. I have 3 questions - A little background about this : Initially, close to 150 pages were indexed by google. However, we decided to remove close to 100 URLs (as they were quite similar). After the changes, we submitted the NEW sitemap (with close to 50 pages) & google has indexed those URLs in sitemap. 1. My pages were indexed by google few days back. How long does google take to display the URL in SERP once the pages get indexed ? 2. Does google give more preference to websites with more number of pages than those with lesser number of pages to display results in SERP (I have just 50 pages). Does the NUMBER of pages really matter ? 3. Does removal / change of URLs have any negative effect on ranking ? (Many of these URLs were not shown on the 1st page) An answer from SEO experts will be highly appreciated. Thnx !
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PepMozBot0 -
Serps drop on 21st
Hi, This is my website: http://goo.gl/fl5a5 Earlier i used to be on #1 and #3 page results for most of my results. But after 21st dec, my results went to 10th and 13th page of results. Is it due to latest panda update? http://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-maybe-16121.html If so, can you guys examine my website and provide me your suggestions please... PS: i have followed only genuine kinda link buildings, my content is 100% unique. Will be waiting for your replies.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vegitt0 -
Meta Revisit?
Hi there, We have just migrated to a new website with a new design etc and I have noticed that we now have this code on our website: From my understanding this is telling search engines to come back to your website in 10 days time to crawl the website? I'm sure I have read on serveral occasions that you should not does this and let search engines crawl your site when it see's fit to do so? Hope someone can help me out on this Kind Regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Should I completly remove the meta tags keywords in the html page?
So if the metag is not longer used by the search engines should I keep them in my html ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lomastravel0 -
Googlebot + Meta-Refresh
Quick question, can Googlebot (or other search engines) follow meta refresh tags? Does it work anything like a 301 in terms of passing value to the new page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kchandler1