Why has Google removed meta descriptions from SERPS?
-
One of my clients' sites has just been redesigned with lots of new URLs added. So the 301 redirections have been put in place and most of the new URLs have now been indexed. BUT Google is still showing all the old URLs in the SERPS and even worse it only displays the title tag. The meta description is not shown, no rich snippet, no text, nothing below the title. This is proving disastrous as visitors are not clicking on a result with no description. I have to assume its got something to do with the redirection, but why is it not showing the descriptions?
I've checked the old URLs and he meta description is definitely still in the code, but Google is choosing not to show it. I've never seen this before so I'm struggling for an answer. I'd like to know why or how this is happening, and if it can be resolved.
I realise that this may be resolved when Google stops showing all the old URLs but there's no telling how long that will take (can it be speeded up?)
-
Yeah, the 301 should be taking effect, but apparently Google thinks that the 301 is more of a 302. We have seen Bing come out and say sometimes they will ignore commands and treat a 301 like a 302. Do you 301 things often?
Regardless, since there are no more links pointing to the /Lavender page, you can 404 or 410 that page and let it drop in the index. The new one should take it's place. You do risk losing traffic for a little time though, just be aware of that. Should fix the issue though.
-
But the 301 is still about a year old!
-
That's right: I updated the internal links a little over a month ago & the other stuff was during the last 3 weeks, with the last changes over a week ago now.
-
When did you change the links on your site and the backlinks? I ask because OpenSiteExplorer still sees them which tells me it was in the last few months I think. Is that right?
-
Howdy!
We're having the same issue with an important url. About a year ago, I slapped a 301 from
http://www.ashridgetrees.co.uk/Lavender
to
http://www.ashridgetrees.co.uk/Lavender-Plants
I've updated all the links on our site that pointed to the old URL and even managed to update some external backlinks. I've also built a new backlink from a respected, relevant site to the new URL, as well as tweeted & facebooked at it. Finally, I've updated our sitemap.
Despite all of this and the amount of time that's passed, the old url is still in the serps. We have a good crawl rate and whenever we make a new page, even one that's quite deep in the site with no direct access from the main navigation, it's in the SERPs in less than a week.
Any ideas?
Our company is Ashridge Trees
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=lavender+plants&pws=0&hl=en&num=10
Thanks!
-
Can you give us an example of a SERP result?
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
-
How to show number of products in your Google SERP?
I have used to rich snippet to my website & everything is working fine except showing the total number of products listed in the particular category. Check out the screenshot below: aH7XM
Technical SEO | | promodirect0 -
How can i Get this google meta description?
How can i Get the google meta description that has the website Ke Adventure ? https://www.google.co.uk/?gws_rd=ssl#q=ke+adventure I mean with the link of the website section below the SEO TITLE tx
Technical SEO | | tourtravel0 -
Should I put meta descriptions on pages that are not indexed?
I have multiple pages that I do not want to be indexed (and they are currently not indexed, so that's great). They don't have meta descriptions on them and I'm wondering if it's worth my time to go in and insert them, since they should hypothetically never be shown. Does anyone have any experience with this? Thanks! The reason this is a question is because one member of our team was linking to this page through Facebook to send people to it and noticed random text on the page being pulled in as the description.
Technical SEO | | Viewpoints0 -
Problem with Google SERPS
I am running yoast SEO plugin in WP. I just noticed when I google the client, none of their meta data is showing. I see that I had facebook OG clicked, which looks like it made duplicates of all the titles etc. Would that be the problem? I have since turned it off. I am hoping that was the problem. Also, when the client searches it says in the meta desc - you've viewed this site many times". What is that?
Technical SEO | | netviper0 -
Meta Title Tags
Hi, Are Meta Title Tag deemed by google to be unique if I use the same phrases by in a different order. For example 3 different pages <colgroup><col width="475"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | Studio33
| Online Invoicing Software | Online Invoicing | Invoicing Software |
| Online Invoicing | Invoicing Software | Online Invoicing Software |
| Invoicing Software | Online Invoicing Software | Online Invoicing | You will not it is the same keywords just in a different order. Is this unique enough or will google not be happy about it. Thanks Andrew0 -
Have my SERP listings been hacked?
When you Google my site the organic search results look normal. The preview site images even display my actual site when you roll over the results. However, when you click a result you are directed to various Spam pages, not my website. How is this possible? This only happens when you click through from search engines. If you type the URL directly in your browser, you are not redirected to a spam site. the site: funeralhomeoptions.com Have any of you seen or experienced this before?
Technical SEO | | emmyjo0 -
Penalized by google. How to find out?
Our webpage performs very bad on some keywords relating to one product. At the SeoMoz-ranking page i can se we are number 9 but we have the highest (higher than our competitors) rating in almost every category (at least 25 of 30) on the keyword difficulty report. How do i find out why this is so, or if we have been penalized by google?On other search-engines (yahoo, bing etc) we are number one! And we have the highest pagerank among the competitors...
Technical SEO | | alsvik0 -
For Google + purposes, should the author's name appear in the Meta description or title tag of my web site just as you would your key search phrase?
Relative to Cyrus Shepard's article on January 4th regarding Google's Superior SEO strategy, if I'm the primary author of all blog articles and web site content, and I have a link showing authorship going back to Google Plus, is a site wide link from the home page enough or should that show up on all blog posts etc and editorial comment pages etc? Conversely, should the author's name appear in the Meta description or title tag of my web site just as you would your key search phrase since Google appears to be trying to make a solid connection with my name, and all content?
Technical SEO | | lwnickens0