Sometimes our meta description being displayed is not ours?
-
We just launched our new website a week ago (also switched to Wordpress). Yesterday I noticed that sometimes our homepage Meta Description displays something different in Google results than what we have set. I had others confirm the same result on their computers. I asked all who have been involved with marketing for company if that description was ever used for the company, as it seemed odd and worded very strange. No one has ever seen this or used this on any of our listings, social profiles etc ever. I check my meta descriptions set for home page and they were still correct. Also did a view source for cache page by Google and it showed the correct Meta Description. Still confused, I did an exact match search on the description and came up with about 30+ spam/link farm type of websites with this odd description noted by our name along with a link back to us. We never asked or paid for these. Why are they there? And how could this influence our homepage meta description? This has me very concerned that we might already be getting hacked. I see no other issues with the site.
Looking for any help regarding:
- Why is the odd meta description showing up sometimes?
- Why do we have backlinks from these random sites?
- Is this all connected? Maybe trackbacks and pingbacks?
Any help you can provide me is appreciated. Thanks!
-
Good idea. Thanks for the help!
-
As with any backlinks you dont want, if you cant request removal you should disavow them in GWMT
-
Ok. Will do.
Any recommendation as far as those 30+ backlinks from those link farm sites? It is strange that those are the only websites that include that incorrect meta description.
-
Hmm i cant see anything funny going on, this is essentually what googlebot should see when viewing the page. If you'd been hacked i would expect to see the wrong description here.
If the site has been live a week, you might just be in a bit of a blip. Best thing i can suggest is request a reindex / new crawl in GWMT and wait it out. Google can take 3 ~ 4 weeks to update listings properly when meta information changes (in my experiance atleast)
-
Doubtful. This was not on the old website. I'm told it was never used. See below, the wording is awkwardly worded, which makes me think it was a poor translation or something. Not sure.
"Manufactures a fencing system to protect pool systems from children."
-
Ah, completely missed the attachement.
I'll poke about and see if i can spot anything
-
Hi Toby - Please see the image in my first comment above. This includes screenshot of both variations.
-
Can you provide exactly what your seeing? (as in the full meta description that you think is incorrect and what it should be?)
This is what i see when viewing markup on your homepage, but with the above info i have no idea if thats correct or not
-
Old indexed content??
-
David - This incorrect meta description does not appear anywhere on our website or anywhere on our Google+, social sites, etc.
-
Meta Description sometimes are now pulled from the main body content, Google is getting more and more good at finding the most relevant content on a page to display to a particular search.
In the future i can see Meta Descriptions being dropped just the same as the Meta Keywords have
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
-
Does Google want contact numbers in the meta description?!
Reading up it seems like there's complete free reign to enter what you want in the meta description and they are not considered a direct ranking signal However I have added contact numbers to the meta descriptions for around 20 reasonably high ranking pages for my company and it seems to have had a negative effect (taken screen grabs and previous rankings) More strangely when you 'inspect' the page the meta description features the desired number yet when you find the page in the serps the meta description just does not feature the number (page has been cached and the description does not carry on) I'm wondering whether such direct changes are seen as spam and therefore negative to the page?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jacksons_Fencing1 -
Besides description and design optimization, is there any other main factor that we can influence to get better App Store rankings?
Hi there! I do love SEO, the cracking Web Search engine, but when it comes to other Google's search engines like Youtube and Apps Store it's an unknown field for me.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Gaston Riera
So, i'm diving into App Store Optimization, ASO. This is my question: Besides the text and the design in the description of the app, is there any other factor that we can manipulate or influence?(such as linkbuilding, social media or alien magic hehe). Thanks a lot!
GR.0 -
Meta tags for international domains
Hi Mozers I have 3 top level domains co.nz com.au and com each meta tag for the home page is unique for each country and I have tried to figure this out for the last 3 months, but unfortunately I can't seem to pin point why all 3 meta tags are showing up exactly the same. It seems all meta tags are showing up for the co.nz domain. In the attachments you can see all urls are showing up correctly for each country specific domain, however the meta tag description defaults to the NZ Any help around this would be much appreciated! Thanks all
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | edward-may0 -
Should I delete Meta Keywords from a website?
Hi Guys, I've been reading various posts on the Q&A section here at Moz about Meta keywords. I understand that meta keywords are not relevant with Google and that Bing signals this as spam. I'm optimising existing websites which already have meta keywords in the html coding. My question is: If I delete ALL meta keyword coding will this have any negative impact whatsoever? Thanks Mozers Jason 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Grant-Westfield0 -
A site is using their competitors names in their Meta Keywords and Descriptions
I can't imagine this is a White Hat SEO technique, but they don't seem to be punished for it by Google - yet. How does Google treat the use of your competitors names in your meta keywords/descriptions? Is it a good idea?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PeterConnor0 -
Would having a + plus sign between keywords in meta title have an effect on SEO?
I have seen one of my clients' competitors do this in their meta title and it got me a little intrigued... I understand that google uses the + sign as an operator in adwords, and to a certain extent, as a search tool, but would it help or make any difference to the SEO in the meta title/data (eg. 'SEO+Marketing+Services')? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | LexisClick10 -
Can you use the image description for IMG ALT?
ello ello! We're running an ecommerce site with thousands of products. None of the product pages have an IMG ALT. We're been thinking about an IMG ALT rule to apply to all product page images. Every image currently has a detailed caption so the thought was, why don't we use the description as the IMG ALT? It's perfect as it explains the image. Now the thing is, the length of the description, some of them come to 150 - 200 characters with spaces. Do you think this is too much? Also, would having a caption and the IMG ALT be the same cause issues? Have you guys employed any rules for IMG ALT in a bulk way?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Google Penguin w/ Meta Keywords
It's getting really hard filtering through the Penguin articles flying around right now so excuse me if this has been addressed: I know that Google no longer uses the meta keywords as indicators (VERY old news). But I'm just wondering if they are starting to look at them as a bigger spam indicator since Penguin is looking at over-optimization. If yes, has anyone read good article indicating so? The reason I ask is because I have two websites, one is authoritative and the other… not so much. Recently my authoritative website has taken a dip in rankings, a significant dip. The non-authoritative one has increased in rankings… by a lot. Now, the authoritative website pages that use meta-keywords seem to be the ones that are having issues… so it really has me wondering. Both websites compete with each other and are fairly similar in their offerings. I should also mention that the meta-keywords were implemented a long time ago… before I took over the account. Also important to note, I never purchase links and never practice any spammy techniques. I am as white hat as it gets which has me really puzzled as to why one site dropped drastically.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BeTheBoss0