Description Tag Trouble

[ptalbot]

Google is leaving out the first sentence of my description tag on the results page. Is there a way for me to remedy this?

Thanks.

[oilman]

Google doesn't use your description tag by default. They grab content from around the search phrase. There's not much you can do about it.

[Jorge]

Google shows in its description the first occurance of the search phrase in a page. This could be your description tag, or the text from the page itself. The description tag is not used if it does not contain the search phrase. An example would be for mysite.com:

<TITLE>my site sells red cars</TITLE>
<meta name="description" content="my site sells the greatest and fastest red vehicles in the world.">

Actual site content:

"My site has good red cars that are fast and bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla "

Google search phrase: ""fastest red vehicle"

Your site will show up in the results including your description tag as:

my site sells red cars
..site sells the greatest and fastest red vehicles in the world.

But if you used "has good red cars " as your google search phrase the results would look something like this, using text from the page itself to describe the site:

my site sells red cars
My site has good red cars that are fast and bla bla bla bla bla

[orion]

Google shows in its description the first occurance of the search phrase in a page. This could be your description tag, or the text from the page itself. The description tag is not used if it does not contain the search phrase. Actually Google SERP entries are contextual window texts. They may or may not start with the first occurance of the search phrase in a page, as in http://www.google.com/search?q=car%20parts

Since Google defaults to FINDALL (AND) the terms in the query can be shown in any part of the document and regardless of order and proximity. This include the descriptive text in the SERPs (not to be confused with the meta description tag).

Orion

[Jorge]

Didn't know that thanks!