Meta description issue on Google
-
Hello,
I have a small issue on Google with our Meta Description tag not always being properly displayed.
If you search for the term: Globe Car (in two words), everything is being displayed properly: http://screencast.com/t/YQCUkJnk
Now do the same search for the term GlobeCar (in one word) and the meta tag set into our homepage seems to be totallly ignored and Google is now displaying something that is generated from out of their hat: http://screencast.com/t/K0KeeRGSgspV
Anyone has an idea what would cause this?
Thanks!
-
For the "globe car" keyword, google shows the result from your meta description.
But for "globecar" keyword, I think it's showing the result from your G+ business listing page. It should be happening for Structured Data (schema) or as it's your brand name.
-
Hi,
I recently answered a question just like this here. This also includes a link to a video by Matt Cutts in regards to this topic.
The key here is that Google will take the "search words" and try to general results that are the most applicable to that search. In many cases that means they generate their own descriptions.
This is a huge task and Google does a very good job with most searches, however I have never seen a perfect search engine. In your case Globe Car and GlobeCar are 2 different keywords sets to Google. For very popular terms like WordPress and Word Press, Google has learned to treat them the same, but it can't do this for every word or set of words.
I hope this helps,
Don
-
"1. Focus Your META Description
Let's say that, for some reason, we really wanted that SEOmoz blog post to rank for "January 19". One solution is to make sure that phrase appears in our META description for the relevant page. If Google can find the matching copy in your description, they're more likely to use the tag as is. It's also just a good exercise – figuring out what your core target keywords are and targeting them naturally in your META description (don't just make it a list of keywords, of course) will help you focus your overall on-page SEO efforts."
https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/why-wont-google-use-my-meta-descriptionAnd i didn't see GlobeCar in your meta description. That's why on one keyword Google didn't display your meta description and show something from code that contain GlobeCar. Also in title you have "Globe Auto", domain is different and this will confuse user so they didn't display original description.
I forgot also this one:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?hl=en
"Google will sometimes use the meta description of a page in search results snippets, if we think it gives users a more accurate description than would be possible purely from the on-page content."
seems that they think that your description is different than on-page content.
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
-
We need a bit of help from someone to fix the following issues causing speed issues on our website.
Hi We need a bit of help from someone to fix the following issues causing speed issues on our website.Does anyone know of someone that can help? Reduce server response time Optimize images Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content Avoid landing page redirects Leverage browser caching Minify CSS Minify JavaScript Minify HTML
Technical SEO | | Bev.Aquaspresso0 -
Domain not ranking in Google
https://www.buitenspeelgoed.nl/ is a domain acquired by our client. Previously this website was on http://www.buitenspeelgoed-keupink.nl. With the old domain they were ranking top 30 on 'buitenspeelgoed' in google.nl. Now with the new exact match domain they aren't ranking any more (for months). However, the website is indexed, as you can see on http://1l1.be/nz I don't know what to do anymore. Need some advise. What we allready have done the last months: made adjustments to the 301-redirects (this was originaly setup wrong by the webdesigner (de) optimized the homepage on 'buitenspeelgoed' (strange is the fact that the Moz robot can't access the site). Checked the robots.txt to see if the website was blocked for Google Checked the meta robots to see if the website was blocked for Google Disavowed some spammy (old) links which linked to the old domain Checked Search console > Fetch as Google if there isn't any Malware of some kind (and to see if Google can access the site) Checked Search consol to see if there manual spam actions (isn't the case) Checked for duplicate content by copy/paste some texts in Google and see if any other results are showing up (isn't the case for most of the texts) Please let me know what we can do.
Technical SEO | | InventusOnline0 -
How do I avoid this issue of duplicate content with Google?
I have an ecommerce website which sells a product that has many different variations based on a vehicle’s make, model, and year. Currently, we sell this product on one page “www.cargoliner.com/products.php?did=10001” and we show a modal to sort through each make, model, and year. This is important because based on the make, model, and year, we have different prices/configurations for each. For example, for the Jeep Wrangler and Jeep Cherokee, we might have different products: Ultimate Pet Liner - Jeep Wrangler 2011-2013 - $350 Ultimate Pet Liner - Jeep Wrangler 2014 - 2015 - $350 Utlimate Pet Liner - Jeep Cherokee 2011-2015 - $400 Although the typical consumer might think we have 1 product (the Ultimate Pet Liner), we look at these as many different types of products, each with a different configuration and different variants. We do NOT have unique content for each make, model, and year. We have the same content and images for each. When the customer selects their make, model, and year, we just search and replace the text to make it look like the make, model, and year. For example, when a custom selects 2015 Jeep Wrangler from the modal, we do a search and replace so the page will have the same url (www.cargoliner.com/products.php?did=10001) but the product title will say “2015 Jeep Wrangler”. Here’s my problem: We want all of these individual products to have their own unique urls (cargoliner.com/products/2015-jeep-wrangler) so we can reference them in emails to customers and ideally we start creating unique content for them. Our only problem is that there will be hundreds of them and they don’t have unique content other than us switching in the product title and change of variants. Also, we don’t want our url www.cargoliner.com/products.php?did=10001 to lose its link juice. Here’s my question(s): My assumption is that I should just keep my url: www.cargoliner.com/products.php?did=10001 and be able to sort through the products on that page. Then I should go ahead and make individual urls for each of these products (i.e. cargoliner.com/products/2015-jeep-wrangler) but just add a “nofollow noindex” to the page. Is this what I should do? How secure is a “no-follow noindex” on a webpage? Does Google still index? Am I at risk for duplicate content penalties? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | kirbyfike0 -
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 -
How to solve the meta : A description for this result is not available because this site's robots.txt. ?
Hi, I have many URL for commercialization that redirects 301 to an actual page of my companies' site. My URL provider say that the load for those request by bots are too much, they put robots text on the redirection server ! Strange or not? Now I have a this META description on all my URL captains that redirect 301 : A description for this result is not available because this site's robots.txt. If you have the perfect solutions could you share it with me ? Thank You.
Technical SEO | | Vale70 -
Ranking on google.com.au but not google.com
Hi there, we (www.refundfx.com.au) rank on google.com.au for some keywords that we target, but we do not rank at all on google.com, is that because we only use a .com.au domain and not a .com domain? We are an Australian company but our customers come from all over the world so we don't want to miss out on the google.com searches. Any help in this regard is appreciated. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | RefundFX0 -
Want to Target Mobile site for Google Mobile Version and Desktop Site for Google Desktop Version
I have ecommerce site with both mobile version and desktop version. Mobile version starts with m.example.com and full version starts with www.example.com I am using same content through out both site and using 301 redirection by detecting user agent vice-versa. My both sites are accessible to crawl by any google spider. I have submitted both sites's sitemap to GWT and mobile site having mobile sitemap xml, so google can easily recognize my mobile site. Is it going to help to rank my both sites as per my expectation? I need to rank for mobile site in Google mobile and ranking for desktop site in Google desktop version. Some of pages of my mobile site are started to appearing in Google desktop version. So how I can stop them to appear in Google desktop? Your comments are highly welcome.
Technical SEO | | Hexpress0 -
Google Sandboxing
I have a new site with a new domain that ranked well the 1st week or so after it was indexed then it totally dropped off the SERP. My question is, does Google Sandboxing affect new sites on new domains that don't have any incoming links? The site dropped off before I began link building - from what I've read unnatural link build is often the cause. Can you still be sandboxed without any link building? If this is the case, are there things I can do to get out of the sandbox? Thanks folks, Jason
Technical SEO | | OptioPublishing0