Why is Google showing my alt descriptions in the SERP's?

dschroeder · #1 07-09-2007

Can anybody tell me why Google is showing the "alt" description in the search results? If you do a search for "car accident attorney los angeles", we are somewhere between 5-10. But for the search description, it showed the 1st alt "Los Angeles car accident attorney", and then all the rest of my alt's, "pi-header, pi-header, pi-header, pi-header, pi-header, pi-header, pi-header, pi-header". Here is a PDF Document for you to see what I'm talking about.

http://michaelhsilvers.com/openarea/caraccidentattorneylosangeles.pdf

Now this was Thursday July 5th, 2007. Today is the 9th., and now it is showing the new alt descriptions that I replaced "pi-header" with. Each alt is separated by a comma on Google too!

Here are the fist several alt's now:
Los Angeles car accident attorney, Specializing in car accidents for 30 years, Serving all of California, 24 offices throughout California, Free phone, ...

Why is Google doing this, and two am I going to get in trouble for adding the text I want viewed in the description?

Also if you change the keyword "attorney" to "attorneys" or to "lawyer" or "lawyers", Google does not do the same thing. It is taking text off my page and is displaying it.

Anybody have good explanation for this, and also any ideas on what I should do about this?

Thanks,

David

beu · #2 07-09-2007

Because your meta keyword and descriptions are improperly formatted the search engines may be ignoring them and instead going with the first "content" on the page, your "alt tags". However, this sometimes happens even with properly formatted meta data.

You might remove some of the images high on the page and use text instead. Keep in mind Google has no eyes and can't see content in images. The commas are most likely separating "ALT tag" content.

Here is how Google sees your page:
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:...&hl=en&strip=1

As for your other question, changing keywords even slightly changes the results. Due to the algorithm it is possible one query is handled differently than another. Hope this helps and best of luck to you!

Marcia · #3 07-10-2007

Use the search term in the text of the meta description, preferably toward the beginning, so it's the first occurrence seen when the snppet is generated.

taljanich · #4 07-13-2007

Google showing most relevant text at snippets.
It could be your META Description, or Alt Description, or part of <body> text.

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