Meta tag help

[Stationery-Direct]

Can anybody tell me why when my website ukaccommodationsearch.co.uk is listed on google.co.uk, the description tag is never displayed, instead the first few lines of text within the page are displayed which are not relevant.

My description tag is very important and I would prefer this to be displayed.

Any ideas? is the tag written in-correctly or something as my competitors description tags are displayed.

Thanks for any advice

Damon

[Richard Conyard]

AFAIK the only time descriptions are displayed is when you submit your site to google :(

[mattk]

What amkes you think it isn't?

When I search for:

site:www.ukaccommodationsearch.co.uk

It seems to display each page with it's associated desctiprion.

[DavidHorn]

I think that the keypoint you should be addressing is why the first few lines of text within the page are not relevant? My advice would be to make the first few lines of text extremely relevant.

Following that, Google does not value meta-tags in general particularly highly. Anyone could fill their meta-tags with a bunch of spam and think they're entitled to a number 1 ranking. So, it looks for more detailed information about what is actually on your page - i.e. the content itself and how that's structured.

Structure your page with meaningful markup - ask your designer to make sure that the title tag, the heading tags, etc. are used properly.

You cannot control what content google uses to display it's search results, but you can make sure that what google sees when it visits your site makes sense and is relevant.

Hope this helps,

David

[Stationery-Direct]

Thanks for the info guys, I must be working too hard as the associated description is displayed as mattk says.

thanks

[Tin]

David wrote:
You cannot control what content google uses to display it's search results

Incorrect, you can control what Google shows in it's results if by results you mean the code snippet that appears in the listing results. Understanding where Google and other engines pull this information from and why is one of the techniques used in seo.

Used correctly, it can be a very good initial sales pitch to your visitors before they've clicked to go to your site. :)

Ray

[DavidHorn]

Hi Ray - yes, I see what you mean - however, what I was getting at is that Google is outside your sphere of influence.

The fact is they might decide, tomorrow, to do everything differently - rendering previous efforts to manipulate what Google displays meaningless. However, if you focus on high quality, properly structured content ... well, that never goes out of fashion!

[Tin]

Ok.. :?