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    • 6561
    • 139 Posts
    I’m working on a website for a client, and I’ve added Meta/keywords and Meta/description tags in the head section. However, on some (a lot) of pages Google doesn’t use the description tag for it’s summary in the search results.

    <br /><head><br />  <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /><br />  <meta name="keywords" content="keyword, keyword two, three"><br />  <meta name="description" content="Website title: we do this stuff." /><br />  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="/css/style_screen.css" /> <br />  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="/css/style_print.css" /><br />  <title>Website Title - We Do This Stuff.</title>	<br /></head><br />


    It doesn’t use that, instead it uses indexed text from the page content... and to make it worse, it starts with the menu content instead of the main content.

    So can anyone tell me, why doesn’t Google use the description tags??

    Thanks In Advance,

    Darkelve

      • 12652
      • 228 Posts
      The SEs try to find text for the search snippet that relates and ideally, includes the search phrase or keywords.

      If the site is in the DMOZ directory, then they will generally pull from there, although your can override that.

      In this case, the words that are being searched for may not be in your description, so the SEs will try to find them in your copy, and then include some of the text before and after the words.

      As for the keywords tag, you don’t really have to use that as only two engines even look at it, and as far as can be determined, no SEs use it for ranking purposes.

      Generally though, I’d move the title tag toward the top of the code as that is the most important tag in the eyes of the SEs.
        | Identity Developments delivers SEO focused web design and web presence services
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        • 33372
        • 1,611 Posts
        And perhaps tweak your design so that the menu code is below the actual content.
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          • 6561
          • 139 Posts
          Thank you everyone.