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?)

Doing it this way is indeed pointless. But if you adjust the strategy a little, it can work very well.

What do I mean?  Instead of satellite sites (new domains with no link history, no trust or authority), create satellite pages on established authority domains (Web 2.0 sites, blog platforms, etc, youi know the ones I mean). It's all about the domains (domain authority, links from domains are more important than page metrics).

And don't just stop at one page. Publish multiple pages/articles on those authority sites.

Of course, you must also build links to your satellite pages

I've noticed a difference in the reported PA and LRD numbers for URLs depending on whether you use Open Site Explorer, or look at the same metrics from within the rankings history (in your campaign set up). I've checked this for a few URLs and what I'm seeing is the reported scores for PA and LRDs is different 9 times out of ten. The PA is sometiomes higher on one report, lower on another, or vice versa. Same for LRDs.

I thought it might be because one report was lagging behind and using old data, but that would only make sense if I was seeing an increase in reported LRDs, but it just as often shows a decrease !

Is this just a bug in the campaign>rankings history report or is there a reason for the discrepancies?