Need META Help

lucidreamer

My listing in search engines is displaying page text rather than the META description... check it out:

http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search/ukie?p=Lucidream&ei=UTF-8&x=wrt&y=ie

Anyone know whats going on?

tomED

Google doesn't use your description tag for displaying the text underneath your search result.

It trys to show you where it matched the text. So for example - if my site was optimised for "hosting ireland" and I have hosting ireland mentioned in the body tag - it would show me where and the surrounding text.

Does that make sense? Hard to explain here!

tomED

An example - Search for yahoo

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=yahoo&spell=1

Then search for "Search engine"
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=search+engine

Look at the difference in the listing.

buddy

I was wondering about this too - I knew Google and Yahoo no longer worked using META tags.

Whats the best options then - it appears that your title become the hyperlink - thats simple enough.

Does the description depend on where on the page it finds the relevant search words?

If so, do you have much control over it.

tomED

Google does use meta tags as in it uses the description tag for ranking your site. It no longer uses the keyword tag.

The search facility in Yahoo uses googles results but sometimes tweaks the results to cater for clients in its directory etc.

The title tag is always used as the link title.

Yes it depends on where it finds relevant keywords and no you have no control over it.

buddy

Cool - you learn something new every day - how does it use the description tags to rate the site?

tomED

The basic principle is this - although a lot of other factors are involved to!

The search engine matches your title tag, with your description tag, with the text on your page.

So if you have a particular keyphrase "website design", yu should have this in your title tag, then in your description tag and also mention it in your body tag.

There are numerous other ways to increase your rank.

Tom

buddy

Cheers - had a look around your site - nice work, very informative too.

The bit about Search Engine Spamming is of particular interest.

FixedRate

Click to search google for my user name on a certain free host

People have come to directly my site using these terms:
eircom+flat+rate+billing
utv+dialler
ireland+esat+bt+flatrate
utvip+flat+rate+dialer

Plus I have used some other methods to get my site ranked.

Like repointing a url that was allready dead linked to a page "That this site is nolonger available under this url". And google kept it in its index for nearly over two years like that.

Having said that, the majority off my traffic has come from boards.ie. Thanks Boards. Secondly would be Google.

buddy

You have no title or meta tags (description) - how'd you manage that?

FixedRate

Buddy hit some keys and this was the result:

If your looking at the source of my pages from your browser is showing you. Then your not seeing what the search engines robots are crawling.

The CMS I am using generates Dynamic Meta Keywords.

The pages that make up the guide, in between the same top and bottom menu are static html files, that are been parsed (from a sub-directory) into the style and design of the pages you are seeing.


What I laughed at when looking at my refers is that someone came to my site with this search string:
smoking+ban+in+us+legal+documents

Smoking and Ban came from the News Pages
Legal Documents gave them the url of PN credits page.

The description google put under the link:
"... Former US talks chairman says Northern Ireland peace ... Taoiseach will back smoking
ban, says Martin Irish ... Legal Documents, 1.0, Legal Documents for Your WebSite, ... "

The bold part it picked up from the xml Ireland News feeds on site when it crawled my site.

So what your going to be index under Google, is a bit of pot luck I guess.

If you looking for tips and info on Meta Tags,robots, etc:
Try here !.

buddy

Nice quote - thanks for the tips & the link.