Meta-description not used at all times
-
Hi all
We are marketing an e-commerce site and seem to have a weird issue. For some reason the clearly specified meta description is not being used in the SERPs. Had a look in the source but all tags seems to be there.
The site can be found here:
www.bangerhead.seA sample search in Google that uses the wrong info in the SERP:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C5CHFA_enSE548SE548&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#safe=off&q=bangerheadAny ideas to why this is? Grateful for any inputHave a nice day
Fredrik
-
To expand on what Ryan was saying, your query was for "bangerhead" & your meta descriptions states:
So in this case, since your query was not in your meta description, Google typically will pull a snippet containing that keyword:
**Bangerhead **Professional Fresh Me Up! (200ml) · **Bangerhead **Professional Fresh Me... Moroccanoil Treatment (50 ml) · RefectoCil Frans- & Ögonbrynsfärg.
-
Hi Fredrik. Google will pull description text from snippets throughout the page as per their documentation here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?rd=1. While it's a best practice to write titles and meta descriptions, that Google will use them is no guaranteed. Here' s the part pertaining to your situation:
The description attribute within the tag is a good way to provide a concise, human-readable summary of each page’s content. 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. Accurate meta descriptions can help improve your clickthrough; here are some guidelines for properly using the meta description.
Cheers!
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
-
Should you use www?
The age old question. Should I use "www." for a brand new content site assuming my goal (and most goals starting out) is to get to millions of visits per month? Does the community agree with, http://www.yes-www.org/why-use-www/? The only reason I question it honestly, since most high traffic companies in my search use www., is because moz doesn't. Thanks for your help. Seems it would be quite a pain to go back once you have a lot of traffic.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mag7770 -
Should I use individual product pages for different formats of the same product?
Hi All -- I'm working with a publishing client who is launching a new site. They have a large product catalogue offered in a number of format types (print, ebook, online learning, packages) with each one possessing a unique ISBN code. From past experience, I know that ISBN codes can be a really important ranking factor. We are currently trying to sort out product page guidelines. The proposed methods are: A single product page for all formats. The user then has the option to select which format they wish to purchase. The page would contain all key descriptors for each format, including: individual ISBN, format, title, price, author, etc. We would then use schema mark-up just to assist search engines with understanding and crawling. BUT we worry that the single page won't rank as well as say an invidual product page with a unique ISBN in the URL (for example: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470573325.html) Which leads to the next option... Individual URLs for each format. We understand that most e-commerce guidelines state you shouldn't dilute link equity amongst multiple pages with very similar products and descriptions. BUT we want searchers to be able to search by individual ISBN and still find that specific format within the SERPs. This seems to rule out canonicalizing, because we don't prefer one format over the other and still want say the ebook to show up as much as the print version. If anyone has any other options or considerations that we haven't thought about, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, U
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HarborOneBank0 -
When is it time to kill 301 redirects
3 months we updated our site design design and as such lots of page urls changed. At the time we 301 redirected about 100 pages. (All pages are on the same domain - 301 redirects like .com/about-us/company to .com/company) Anyhow my question is should I leave these redirects active indefinitely or kill them assuming value has passed through by now? Your Thoughts are welcomed. Thanks, Glen.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdvanceSystems0 -
How do I get my Golf Tee Times pages to index?
I understand that Google does not want to index other search results pages, but we have a large amount of discount tee times that you can search for and they are displayed as helpful listing pages, not search results. Here is an example: http://www.activegolf.com/search-northern-california-tee-times?Date=8%2F21%2F2013&datePicker=8%2F21%2F2013&loc=San+Diego%2C+CA&coupon=&zipCode=&search= These pages are updated daily with the newest tee times. We don't exactly want every URL with every parameter indexed, but at least http://www.activegolf.com/search-northern-california-tee-times. It's weird because all of the tee times are viewable in the HTML and are not javascript. An example of similar pages would be Yelp, for example this page is indexed just fine - http://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=dogwalkers&find_loc=Lancaster%2C+MA I know ActiveGolf.com is not as powerful as Yelp but it's still strange that none of our tee times search pages are being indexed. Would appreciate any ideas out there!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CAndrew14.0 -
Outreach to bloggers for product reviews. All at once or stretched over time?
We have identified about 150 bloggers in our niche worldwide and want to send them a free product sample for a review on their blog. From former similar promotion we know that actually the vast majority will accept. Would you send the proposal at once to all bloggers or just contact lets say 5 per week over 6 months? Do you think it is better to vary the products to be reviewed instead of sending all the exact same product model? Not sure how bloggers will like it if they notice that we made the same proposal to every blogger and that on all blogs in our niche about the same time suddenly reviews of same products appear? Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0 -
Canonical Meta Tag Best Practices
I've noticed that some website owners use canonical tags even when there may be no duplicate issues.For examplewww.examplesite.com has a canonical tag.......rel="canonical" href="http://www.examplesite.com/" />www.examplesite.com/bluewidget has a canonical tag.......rel="canonical" href="http://www.examplesite.com/bluewidget/" />Is this recommended or helpful to do this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webestate0 -
Meta tag description Usage
Do i wanna put meta tags as separate description that is not in the particular web page ,Normally i put meta description as 155 character from first paragraph of the web page .so do i need put a unique meta description ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Using 2 wildcards in the robots.txt file
I have a URL string which I don't want to be indexed. it includes the characters _Q1 ni the middle of the string. So in the robots.txt can I use 2 wildcards in the string to take out all of the URLs with that in it? So something like /_Q1. Will that pickup and block every URL with those characters in the string? Also, this is not directly of the root, but in a secondary directory, so .com/.../_Q1. So do I have to format the robots.txt as //_Q1* as it will be in the second folder or just using /_Q1 will pickup everything no matter what folder it is on? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo1234560