Are Search Engines Displaying Your Desired Description?

Search engines display a brief description of a returned website in their search results to help users get an idea of what that webpage is about before clicking through. There are a few different ways search engines generate the text in the description. Most of the time, if the webpage has a meta description tag designated, engines will use this. If there is not a meta description tag, either a snippet of text from the page copy will be used, or perhaps an external source will be used. The most common external source search engines use is a description from your website's listing in the Open Directory Project (DMOZ). If you have designated a meta description tag and search engines are not using it in your description, you can prompt them not to use the DMOZ description by inserting a NOODP meta tag. Here is the tag used for NOODP: META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP". It’s worth noting that if your meta description is too long for search engines to accommodate in their results page, they may choose to not use it. A good rule of thumb is to keep your meta description under 15 words. Work with your search team to optimize your meta description.