One of the things that frustrates a customer the most is when Google sweats out their META Description for the snippet they display on the results page, and something crazy like this appears:
What the hell…? Because M? -you will wonder- With the super tag “description” that I had worked on, with its keywords and I don’t know how many stories! Well, I will try to answer everything. Let’s start with the basics…
Where does Google get the information it displays?
- From the META Description tag
- From a piece of the web
- From the Open Directory Project
In the case of the example, we see that Google has taken part of the address, a date, a piece of the footer, some sentences of the content, and has made what is technically called “shit description”.
How to force Google to use my META Description?
Well, as we can imagine, there is no automatic and infallible way, but with these three steps, I have always managed to “force” to use that label. We go from the simplest to the most elaborate:
1. Block the description of the ODP
Silly, but sometimes it happens. Make sure that Google is not using your Open Directory Project description, that is, the . That’s easy, just put the following code:
If it was that, the solution has been easy and fast. But in the majority of cases that concern us, this will not be precisely the problem. Let’s continue then.
2. Eliminate duplicate METAs
If your website has duplicate TITLE or DESCRIPTION tags, it is very likely that this will happen to you. Each page must have its own title and its own description, otherwise Google can get pretty messed up, and end up doing that “mix”.
To ensure that you don’t have any duplicate titles or descriptions, you should use the Webmaster Tools HTML Suggestions report. I tell you how to do it in the article “”
3. Change your META Description
Yes, exactly. If for some reason Google has decided to put “barcelona”, “all rights reserved” or “blogroll” in that mix, it will be for a reason. So you should rewrite your description using some of the words that Google has placed.
So, if Google sees that in your META Description there are the words that it has decided are important, it will decide to use that “description” rather than make a “mix” of pieces of your website. Later, when you see that and use it, you can modify it little by little.
In principle, with these three steps you will be able to “force” Google to use your META. If none of that works, just let it run. As the months go by, if your META is appropriate, Google will eventually see it, and will place it where it belongs.
However, there is a drastic possibility that you can use, in case your fragment is so horrible that you think it even harms you. It could be that some webspammer has given you a description selling blue pills, or part of a comment from a dissatisfied customer appears, shitting on everything. For these cases, you can make Google simply NOT show any fragment, with the following instruction:
This instruction is very radical, because it may also affect indexing, so it is better not to use it if it is not essential. You have more information about it in the article “”.
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