Google not displaying our site description right

samv · Mar 7th, 2008, 10:24

Hello,

Google has never listed our description when we get returned in a search. If you type dressed to a tee into google you get dressed to a tee - keep smiling & swing easy, but underneath instead of having our description, you get our news posts - we update these weekly. Can anyone tell me why this happens, and how to get our description coming out underneath so people can tell what we do.

I have listed our head code below and our site is www.dressedtoatee.co.uk

Any help much appreciated

Many Thanks

sam

Code: Select all

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">

<head>
    <title>dressed to a tee - keep smiling & swing easy</title>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
    <meta name="description" content="We love the fairways and are dedicated to creating the best golf clothing on the planet." />
    <meta name="keywords" content="dressed to a tee, dressed to a tee golf clothing, golf, clothing, golfwear, men's golf clothing, women's golf clothing, golf t-shirts, golf shirts, golf polo shirts, golf hats, golf accessories, golf balls, golf tees, golf survival kit, golf pitch fork, organic cotton, golf fashion, golf lifestyle, laid back golf, swing easy golf tour" />
    <meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no" />
    <meta name="author" content="dressed to a tee" />
    <base href="http://www.dressedtoatee.co.uk/" />
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="dtat.css" type="text/css" />
    <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico" type="image/ico" />
    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="activateActiveX_onload.js"></script>
    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="dtat_shop_cookies.js"></script>
</head>

aso186 · Mar 7th, 2008, 12:05

Hi Sam

Trouble is, you can never guarantee what description Google will use, because it always aims to serve a dynamic one, based on the user query.

In your case, for the query 'dressed to a tee', Google looks at your site content and finds the most relevant slice. In this case, it's in your news section. Hence the description you get in the results.

This is further magnified by the fact you don't mention 'dressed to a tee' in your meta description. In the eyes of Google

Quote:

We love the fairways and are dedicated to creating the best golf clothing on the planet.

has no relevance to the query, so it is not used.

If you wish to try and take some control over this, there's a few things you can do.

Reword your description, and include the phrase 'dressed to a tee'
Get listed in dmoz.org using your preferred description
Rewrite your home page so it has an introduction, that includes your description and 'dressed to a tee'.

samv · Mar 7th, 2008, 12:22

Hello aso,

thanks for the advice.

Just to confirm then if our title was "dressed to a tee - the ultimate golf clothing company"

And our description

dressed to a tee loves the fairways and is dedicated to creating the best golf clothing on the planet.

That should help?

As well as dmoz registration and an intro on the home page!

Sam

aso186 · Mar 7th, 2008, 13:56

It should help, sure. But as with anything to do with Google, there's no guarantee

samv · Mar 7th, 2008, 14:12

OK!

One more querry i have is that our news section (http://dressedtoatee.typepad.com/) is run through typepad and we then link it to our site.

We have quite a lot of traffic on this part of the site but obviously it is hosted by typepad and not us.

So does it help our search rankings in terms of the traffic visiting it, or because its not actually our site, but merely linked to it, is its affect minimal?

I guess if a visitor goes from our front page to it, then they count as they have visited our site, but if a person just looks at the typepad bit then they don't count as having visited our site, and so won't affect our ranking.

Do you see what i mean?

Sam

MikeHopley · Mar 7th, 2008, 15:49

I wouldn't worry about this.

Just write the most informative description you can (without it being excessively long, of course). Google will use it when appropriate.

When the user's query is better matched by your content than by your description, Google may select a slice of content instead. This is in your best interests, because it keeps the description relevant to users and therefore increases the probability of their clicking through.

aso186 · Mar 7th, 2008, 15:58

The term 'ranking' can sometimes get muddy. One is Pagerank, Google's own measure of a site's importance . The other meaning is usually your position in the search results.

Your Pagerank has no effect on your position in the search results. It is simply Google's measure of your site's importance.

In your current situation, Google will assign a Pagerank to your main site, and one to your typepad site. Because of their different domains, Google sees them as different sites.

The fact that they inter-link each other, and that they are both related, might help boost each others Pagerank. On the other hand, you could see this as shared Pagerank, rather than focusing all of it into one domain.

Site traffic has no effect on your position in the search results.

samv · Mar 7th, 2008, 16:06

Ok, but if google's pagerank doesnt affect my position in the search results.

What does google use it for?

I know from what you say it measure's my sites 'importance' but in what sense and context?

ie if we are halving our page ranking by splitting the site, what are we losing out on?

MikeHopley · Mar 7th, 2008, 16:17

Pagerank does affect search rankings. It is one of many factors that Google uses when ordering search results.

Pagerank is an absolute number, whereas search rankings are relative to search terms.

Think of it like this: if two pages have the same content (or topic), then the one with higher Pagerank will win.

samv · Mar 7th, 2008, 17:38

Hi Mike,

Right I see. So Page rank does affect Search engine ranking but to a lesser extent than title and description matching a query.

It seems a bit of a black art this SEO!

Do google publish a hierarchical list of what affects your search ranking, or does it not do this, so people can't play the system. Hence it being such a black art!

From the info i have gathered, the following affect SE ranking:

1. Name and description matching common words and those in turn matching a query
2. Intro text on homepage backing up above
3. CSS and not tables used for HTML (unfortunatley our site is tables!)
4. Using the H1 and H2 tags. Again we haven't used these, and I think we could add some - any info on how to use these effectively anywhere, as I am not completely sure about what they do.
5. Content - I guess this has to back up point 1 and 2
6. Links - does this include both internal and external ones, and are external ones more important?
7. Page ranking
8. Dmoz registration backing up description.
9. Google doesn't take into account key words at all.

I know it is different for different search engines. But is this list roughly right, have I missed anything major off?

I really appreciate your time in giving me help with this.

Many Thanks

Sam

MikeHopley · Mar 7th, 2008, 19:16

Quote:

Do google publish a hierarchical list of what affects your search ranking

No. But they do give advice to webmasters.

Quote:

From the info i have gathered, the following affect SE ranking:

1. Name and description matching common words and those in turn matching a query
2. Intro text on homepage backing up above
3. CSS and not tables used for HTML (unfortunatley our site is tables!)
4. Using the H1 and H2 tags. Again we haven't used these, and I think we could add some - any info on how to use these effectively anywhere, as I am not completely sure about what they do.
5. Content - I guess this has to back up point 1 and 2
6. Links - does this include both internal and external ones, and are external ones more important?
7. Page ranking
8. Dmoz registration backing up description.
9. Google doesn't take into account key words at all.

(1) Partly correct. The title matters; the description doesn't (but it's still useful because it encourages click-through).

(2) Partially correct. Text on the homepage will only affect the ranking on the homepage, not the whole site.

(3) Incorrect. Table-based layout is bad for several important reasons, but SE ranking is not one of them. SE's look at your content, not the boxes you slot it inside.

(4) Headings are likely to be weighted more strongly than other text. Using informative, logical headings can help indicate to search engines what your pages are about.

(5) Correct. SE's analyse content to guess what the subject matter is.

(6) Inbound links increase Pagerank. The best links are from high Pagerank pages on the same topic as your page. Outbound links will not increase your Pagerank, but may decrease it if you link to "bad neighbourhoods". Links internal to your site are thought to affect the distribution of Pagerank across your pages.

(7) Correct, but Pagerank itself is determined by inbound links (their quantity and quality).

(8) Dmoz listing counts as another high-PR link, and thus boosts Pagerank. Google's directory is taken directly from Dmoz. I don't have any reason to believe the Dmoz description is important (but choose an accurate one, or you won't get into Dmoz).

(9) Incorrect. Google's content analysis will pick up your keywords, providing you have used them appropriately. It will also attempt to detect keyword spam.

spinal007 · Mar 8th, 2008, 16:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeHopley

Pagerank does affect search rankings

Wrong. Pagerank is rather like a measure of how important your website is. This measure JUST SO HAPPENS to be in parallel with actual rankings.

PR is an exponential power (a small number used to represent a much larger number) derived from nothing more than links.

Actual rankings depend on millions of variables, several of which involve links.

samv · Mar 10th, 2008, 09:12

Thanks everyone for your input.

I feel i have a much better understanding of SEO now.

Now's time to put it into practice - have just registered our site with dmoz.org.

Now going through our pages amending titles, keywords and descriptions - should keep me busy for a little while!

MikeHopley · Mar 10th, 2008, 10:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeHopley

Pagerank does affect search rankings

Quote:

Originally Posted by spinal007

Wrong. Pagerank is rather like a measure of how important your website is. This measure JUST SO HAPPENS to be in parallel with actual rankings.

PR is an exponential power (a small number used to represent a much larger number) derived from nothing more than links.

Actual rankings depend on millions of variables, several of which involve links.

Steady on Diego! Ease off the knee-jerk reactions.

I understand perfectly well what Pagerank is.

Taking your statements, I produce a reductio ad absurdum as follows:

Premise 1: Pagerank does not affect search rankings
Premise 2: Pagerank is a measure of how important your website is
Conclusion: Your search rankings are not affected by how important your website is.

...which is patently false, so I have the desired reductio. Therefore one of the premises is false; I blame premise number 1.

I never said that search rankings are the same as Pagerank. Obviously they are completely different. But for any given search subject, the higher-ranking pages will tend to have higher PR.

In case you deem this to be true parellelism -- mere correlation with no causal element -- let's look at what Google themselves say:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Google

Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your searches.

Taken from this page (my bolding).

One more thought on this subject: if Pagerank does not affect search rankings, then what does it do? So as well as my reductio, I can hit you with a "spare wheel" argument.

And technically, Pagerank representation (0 - 10) does not follow an exponential scale. It follows a logarithmic scale. Log(x) is the inverse of e^(x). If Pagerank were exponential in "link popularity", then it would become easier and easier to go up a level, not harder and harder.

It's also difficult to judge what base the logarithmic scale uses; it isn't necessarily base 10.

Finally, we don't know whether Google uses "millions" of factors to determine rankings. No doubt they use some large number, but not necessarily "millions".

spinal007 · Mar 11th, 2008, 11:42

Quote:

Steady on Diego! Ease off the knee-jerk reactions

LOL! Didn't mean to sound rude, I was in a hurry!

I'm in a hurry again (haven't finished reading your post) but I'll leave you with this:

Correlation does not imply causation.
Tall people have big feet, but that's not the reason they're tall.

I'll come back in a bit and reply properly... bare with me!

MikeHopley · Mar 11th, 2008, 12:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by spinal007