Numpty Google question.

[Pondlife]

Thanks all.

I will have a read when I get home.

[NickFitz]

FWIW, here's Google's advice on descriptions, and a Google Webmaster blog post about them.

One thing to check is that you're not using the same description for all pages - the description should be tailored to each page. If the Googlebot finds the same description on every page of the site, Google's algorithms will (I'm guessing) decide that they're not at all helpful and will instead try to build a useful snippet out of the page content.

[DimPrawn]

I've got quite a few websites out there and they are all using the text in the META description tag.

I would suggest that perhaps there's something in you meta description it does not like, perhaps a certain spammy word, or it is stuffed full of keywords, too long, too short or not relevant to the page.

Try changing the text and see if it gets picked up on the next refresh.

[Durbs]

As far as i know, Google will use

1. Description tag
2. Snippet of page text
3. DMOZ description

As for whether it uses 1 or 2, i don't think you can control that other than to ensure your description tag is correctly formatted and check it does not have anything in it that Google may consider as keyword cramming or irrevelent text. It may simply think your description is suspect and not relevent to the page content itself and decide to use the page text instead.

If it's using the DMOZ description then you can tell it not to by adding the tag:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noodp”>

[sweetandsour]

This is what it used to pick up but not any more. The Meta Desc is still there (on the site) but is not displayed by Google.

It is too easy for the unscrupulous to stuff those tags full of mis-information so I don't think that the search engines rely on them so much these days.

I don't have an answer for you, but have you tried giving your site a workover with the webmaster tools provided by Google?

http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/

Apologies if you are already aware of those, but you did say it was a numpty question.

[Pondlife]

If you include a meta description tag in your page, Google should pick this up and use it as the descriptive text within search results.

This is what it used to pick up but not any more. The Meta Desc is still there (on the site) but is not displayed by Google.


Edit: The site was created in Joomla if it makes a difference.

[chicane]

If you include a meta description tag in your page, Google should pick this up and use it as the descriptive text within search results.

[Pondlife]

When searching for My Co's website using Google, the result displayed has picked a random sentence from the front page to use as the text below the URL.

I'm sure this was not the case before - How can I influence this?

TIA

PL.