Hello everyone…my question is: What are your suggestions when Google changes your Meta Description to something showing on your page instead?
Beau Yates: Evaluate whether your Meta description is the best wording to help let people doing a search understand that your page is a strong match to their search intent. Does it come across when you read it, to be a motivator that this is the page I want Or This is a site that will fulfill my needs ?Understand that people may be using a wide range of phrases wher that one page may come up until the search results. So the Meta description needs to not be too narrow for the full purpose of the page existing. Consider what other sites that rank higher, use for theirs.
Jayceon Pierce: Honestly, I only write meta descriptions when someone pays me to. Otherwise I just make sure the page contains the descriptive text for various types of queries. Google wants your whole page to be a pool of meta descriptions. I have been pointing that out to Web marketers for years. Meta descriptions are optional for both Website owners and search engines.
Beau Yates: Until Google picks up completely useless text that makes the search result look like garbage. Ive seen cases where it was pure gibberish because Googles system failed so bad. And when the code is flawed, Ive seen Google pick up strings of code and use that, making it even worse.
Rowan Bishop: Beau Yates: Yes. I prefer to have a bit more control where possible
Jayceon Pierce: Well, if you write nothing relevant to the specific query either in the meta description or on the page, youll definitely get random strings of text pasted together in the snippets. But people keep writing meta descriptions for single queries and the…See more
Jesse Lambert: Im with Michael on this one. A good meta tag is optional. Typically I let Yoast (if Im in WordPress) just add the first bit of text from the page to the meta tag automatically. Why? Because a good page is going to start with a sentence or two that is…See more
Rowan Bishop: ’It depends’
Everett Hill: Google is trying to tell you something…. you might want to listen.
Levi Rodriguez: E.g. duplicate content ?