Meta Description not showing up on Google

[scolacoMember]

Hi There

We are operating with the Genesis Maximum theme and off late our Meta Description and Title tags have not been showing up on Google (Yahoo and Bing seem to bring them up just fine). The page source reveals it as part of the code and we've uploaded several updated sitemaps using the Yoast SEO plugin but it doesn't seem to change anything.

Any ideas on what could be the issue? Our site is http://www.mbassett.com

Thanks

http://www.mbassett.com

[RobinMember]

Based on the 9 plugins that I see detected on your website, there may not be any conflict...but I would check to determine if a recently added plugin might be causing the issue.

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Need help customizing your website? Let me know at RKW Media.

I’m taking up The Challenge by answering some of the Unanswered Posts.

[SpankaMember]

If your source code contains the titles and meta description code, let's go logic style for just a sec:

1. Yahoo & Bing works. Therefore its not your site, it's Google.
2. Let's search on something that makes sense...my title and meta description don't show correctly in the SERPs (seach engine result pages...), so search on that:

google replacing titles and descriptions in serps

Boom - hundreds of results that basically summarise as:

If google feels that your title/meta desc are invalid, spammy, overly SEO'd, misleading or pointless they write their own based upon actual the content of the page.

I don't know if your site is like that - I didn't look. Didn't need to 🙂 The info to solve this problem is in front of me! It also helps that I've been doing SEO for ~10 years of course 😛

A free tip for you: Google does not give a DAMN about your meta desc (or keywords). Hasn't for years. The ONLY value to meta description is that it is usually used as the excerpt of your search engine result - if it's good.

This means that your meta desc is the ONLY PLACE where you get a sentence to convince someone to click. Use it for marketing and enticement, not SEO 🙂 Also - don't bother with the name of your company if you're doing that. Why? If I just found you on a Google search, I don't care about you/your brand/etc yet. I care about what you can do for me - that's why I'm googling! Use it to present immediate benefits as to WHAT I get if I'm smart enough to click YOUR link.

[codableMember]

Your site seems fine now.

I think, I had a similar problem some weeks ago. I started a new project and submitted the sitemap (via Google XML Sitemaps) before I made the site crawlable for search engines. So Google was too fast and took the robots.txt that disallowed crawling the whole site.

It takes some days before Google recognizes the new robots.txt. In that time they try to work with your old robots.txt file. Of cause, that causes problems. You have to be patient and wait. All will be fine after some days. For me it took 3 or 4 days until everything works fine.

So I learned: Never submit a sitemap (site) to Google until you made the site crawlable.

[scolacoMember]

Spanka -

When you say they 'write their own based upon actual the content of the page', does that mean that even if our meta description got flagged as invalid, spammy or too SEO'd we should still see some sort of summary in the search listing?

I only ask because right now we have a page title, and site links to our team and contact pages. If it's reasonable that Google would forego a meta description entirely then I'll go back to the drawing board and create a new one with your suggestions in mind.

codable -

When I pull up the site in Google Search Listings the page title I see is:

Toronto | Martyn Bassett Associates Inc.

Whereas the title that was displaying previously was :

Software Sales Recruitment in Toronto | Martyn Bassett Associates

So, if you're seeing the latter title, then the issue might be resolved, but if you're seeing the previous one then I still have some work to do.

[codableMember]

I see "Toronto | Martyn Bassett Associates Inc.".

Just be patient. Your site should be correctly indexed in hours/days. I know, it's hard to wait but in my opinion there is nothing you can do. It's not your fault.

The Google Robot is fast, but apparently not that fast.

[scolacoMember]

It's like the song says: 'The waiting is the hardest part...'

Thanks for the status report!

[SpankaMember]

even if our meta description got flagged as invalid, spammy or too SEO’d we should still see some sort of summary in the search listing?

Exactly. Let's say for example, I had this:

title: The best web design, websites, sites, designed websites and website portfolio in the world
desc: ---meaningless dribble here---

Google will likely take one look, do it's binary giggle and chop my suburb, industry vertical or tagline (h3-h6 tags) + my company name and use that for a title. It would likely then chop my first para (or part thereof) and use that for an excerpt. In short, if it feels the info you put forward is crap, then it replaces it with something it deems suitable. Fair? Who knows!

I see your former title in Google right now, but I'm no real marker. I'm in Australia and results are geo-specific.

++ to what Codable says. I was more trying to point out "this isn't WP/Plugin, this is google doing its own thing". I've also done what Codable did 🙂 It's not fun.

You can try and expedite the update process:

1) go to Webmaster Tools -> Crawl -> Fetch as Google - get your home page + all pages it links to.
2) alternatively, try submitting a sitemap! it's the best way for google to get the idea that you're different (if indeed you are)
3) if you use google's custom search engine, there is additional stuff in there.

If you can get your sitemaps & robots.txt etc back through google's parse and have it recognise them as ok/valid whatever, you've got a shot and getting on the fast track back. BUT that doesn't mean instant results. Sometimes its a day. Sometimes its a week.

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