Google Uses Search Queries to Return the Right Description

After turning off the importance of keywords tag, now Google is working on picking up the descriptions it shows in the search results based on the content rather than solely depending on the description provided in the meta description tag.

We talk about how this is done on an episode of Path TV, with host Ruben Quinones and guest Avinash Conda.  A brief summary of the conversation in the video is given below.

3 ways Google picks up the description of a web page:

1. The description tag <meta name=”description” content=”put your description here” />.
2. The description provided in the ODP – Open Directory project (Dmoz.org).
3. Description randomly picked up from the on-page content.

When does Google actually pick up a description that’s different than the meta description tag?

1. If the description provided in the description tag is too long
2. If there’s no description tag
3. When Google thinks it can pick up better description from the content based on the search query

What are other ways to suggest to the search engine the description you desire?

This can’t be controlled completely, but keeping in mind the following best practices can help prevent Google from showing a description different that the one you specify in the meta description tag:

1. Write unique, relevant and short descriptions for each web page on your site. Avoid having same title or description tags on multiple pages.
2. Include <meta name=”robots” content=”NOODP”>  in the code to tell the robots to ignore the description from the Open Directory Project. Use <meta name=”robots” content=”NOYDIR”> for Yahoo! Directory (but currently only Yahoo!’s spider, Slurp, uses the Yahoo! Directory).