Google using meta description

**Chris** · 11-19-2005, 08:10 AM

Anyone notice Google almost exclusively using the meta description tag for abstracts now?

**Shawn** · 11-19-2005, 08:19 AM

Indeed, I do.

**Emancipator** · 11-19-2005, 08:29 AM

elaborate please. Been a very long time since I used any meta's.

**Chris** · 11-19-2005, 09:00 AM

I was doing some searches this morning and noticed that Google seemed to use every meta description tag as the abstract, even if the site had plenty of text to pull an abstract from.

**Emancipator** · 11-19-2005, 09:06 AM

hmm interesting. In my case since i have no meta content its grabbing text off the page. I am going to set some meta's and see what it does.

**jonnyhilfiger** · 11-19-2005, 01:03 PM

Yes, noticed this a few weeks ago only because I hadn't updated the meta descriptions on the pages on one of my sites so they all came back with the same description, soon sorted it though.

John

**Emancipator** · 11-19-2005, 04:06 PM

i had noticed some wierd *** abstracts but am glad chris pointed this out. I am going to check my abstracts on Monday and see how google shows it now.

**etech-martin** · 11-21-2005, 11:33 AM

Google sometimes use the meta description tag to create an abstract for your site, so it may be useful to you if your home page is primarily composed of graphics. However, I think you should not expect that it will useful to increase your rank.

**moonshield** · 11-21-2005, 11:53 AM

^ It may not help your rank but it can encourage people to click on it.

**Emancipator** · 11-21-2005, 12:03 PM

i hope everyone here would know that meta isnt involved in the algorithm. But it is nice to have a nice abstract for your site as moon pointed out. My site is nothing but text and without the abstract my MENU was the abstract.

**dburdon** · 11-22-2005, 11:50 AM

I'm not sure Google is actually using the meta description tag. However it does seem slightly more "on page" post the recent Jagger update.

However, its always worth utilising the tag as a discipline for content.

**Chris** · 11-22-2005, 01:30 PM

Originally Posted by etech-martin

Google sometimes use the meta description tag to create an abstract for your site, so it may be useful to you if your home page is primarily composed of graphics. However, I think you should not expect that it will useful to increase your rank.

I don't think everyone gets it when I say "abstract."

Previously it worked as etech said above. But now Google is using the meta description even if there is plenty of usable text on the page itself. This is only for the listing, not for ranking.