Pleased with Your Google Description?
. . . if not, consider these tips for getting the Google description that YOU want!
– by Robin Nobles

When it comes to describing your site, Google assembles what is known as a snippet description to display in their search results. Sometimes it's a good description – one that prompts potential visitors to "click" your link. Other times, it isn't.

Take the case in point where the following page (ranked at #10) in a keyword search for scuba dive "entices" the potential site visitor by revealing the name of the webmaster along with the copyright details...

Oops! ...oh, well – at least their Description, taken from their editor assigned ODP directory description, is relevant – but their snippet leaves something to be desired.

Can the snippet be manipulated?

Of course, this is important because potential site visitors are judging whether to click or not based in part on those snippets. So, how can one go about manipulating Google's snippet advantageously? Let's take a look and see.

For starters, we've found that Google actually pulls the snippet description from several different places on your web page. Let's think about this for a minute. If we could determine where Google is pulling our description, perhaps we might be able to change that wording to "produce" a description that more accurately describes our page.

Where is Google pulling the snippet description?

Currently Google is pulling the snippet from any one or combination of the following areas:

1. META description tag (although Google doesn't use contents to determining relevancy).
2. First ALT text found on the page.
3. First text found on the page (which may be a heading tag, body text, etc.).
4. Additional heading tags on the page.
5. Additional body text found on the page.
6. Additional ALT text on the page.
7. Navigation bar on the left-hand side of the page (which is rare...