Youser from Siegen, NRW asks: "I use "description tags". Still Google search results often start with a date or alter the description snippet. Is there any way of controlling this?"
That is hurting many good sites with good desc. Now, i see many sites with good to perfect meta description tag but STILL! GOOGLE DOESN'T USE THAT!! I think GOOGLE (or any) algorithm is still far off from knowing between bad and good tags so why do this when you're not ready? Consequently, we now see all the messy description snippet for most of the results especially for foreign sites by this change. Thanks to Google.
can I include a snippet of code in my web page and suggest that as my search result description. and can I give other templates as well to make is more interesting like table view
@infiltrator7777 And why do you think that it's your company who's bound to be served by Google? It's the visitors of the site who are Google's customers. And if Google would turn up irrelevant/useless results, they'd risk losing them. So I'm sorry to say this, but if you want to describe your site with no regard of its relevance to the keyword, then it should NOT be used by Google. And besides, why do you rely on them, if you hate them so much? :P
@CoolKoon So another words, Google gets the right to make or break your company? You know Google isn't the only "internet company" to create things online. I can't wait for the day they break.
@infiltrator7777 And why not? That's the same as companies having the right to choose their own suppliers based on THEIR own decisions. Feel free to use a different search engine if you don't like it: Bing, Ask and all the others are waiting just for you. I've never ever seen a Google search ad, yet I've been using it for years, 'cause it WORKS. And it works for non-English searches as well (which the others don't).
@TheAceManHimself Nah, that was actually fairly popular at the dawn of the Internet. Porn (and other) site owners thought that if they stuff their meta description and keyword tags with MANY dozens of keywords (even completely unrelated ones), they'll generally rank better. And yes, they did, but it had nothing to do with relevance. That's why search engines later corrected this flaw. Unfortunately you can still bump into nutjobs who use the same principles....
Taking a snippet from the Dmoz listing!!! Yer right, like it ever gets updated with new sites.
GOOGLE - STOP PUTTING SO MUCH TRUST ON DMOZ. IT'S TOTALLY OUTDATED AND NOT MAINTANED.
good post matt.. for some of us using blogger ,, i am seeing by web master tools that i have duplicate meta description problem as my sites get bigger . This is starting to be a problem Is it worth the effort if the description is relevant to hole site to just lett google handel it auto?
"WE RESERVE THE RIGHT"!
Got it again Matt! You love that line to save your asses.
You guys should print T-shirts. Do you brand that line internally to use?
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