google: indexing / description

Yogi62 · 02-12-03

My new site was recently visited by Google and the root page was checked out, it came back a couple of days later and trawled through the remaining pages linked to the root page.

Since then my site has been listed in Google but:

1)There is no site description in the listing although I have incorporated one in the meta-tags of each page.

2)The 'Title Page' that is presented in the listing is not the title of my root page, instead it shows the title of one that is linked to the root page?

Question 1: If I change the 'Title' of a page will google accept the change and list it accordingly after it's next visit.

Question 2: Do you think that my meta-tagged 'site description' is likley to appear later.

morleymouse · 02-12-03

Google normally just pulls a few lines out of your page and uses that as a description highlighting keywords searched for so the user can work out for themselves if its relevant or not. ie. Google doesn't really use meta descriptions much to my knowledge.

Not sure what you mean by title pages and all that, google will display whatever is between <title></title> in the head of your page as the result title to an extent. If its too long it will shorten it again highlighting keywords searched for.

Yogi62 · 02-12-03

Hi Dan,

To clarify: When I mentioned 'Title Page' I did indeed mean the name of the saved document which I placed between the <Title></Title> tags

I took it for granted that whatever I placed between <Title></Title> tags on my root page Google would use that for the in my listing.

It certainly appears to be the case when looking at other page source codes ?

I appreciate your feed-back.

Note:

I checked out Webmasterworld.com under the 'google news' heading and came across a thread where a great many people have seen their page descriptions complete removed lately.

morleymouse · 02-12-03

You deffinitely want title tags on all your pages. Tres important.

Just checked a few of my sites, there all showing up with titles and descriptions as per usual.

aly · 02-12-03

Hi
Think it's a bit of a glitch at the moment, happened last week to a couple of pages I've had with google for over a year, the titles vanised but came back 3/4 days later.
Same with another site over the weekend, pages are back on this morning.
I would wait to see what next freshtags bring before mucking about with it.
Also worth putting a description tag in as google will use it at times and other engines will use all the time.

Cheers
Aly

Yogi62 · 04-12-03

Thanks Aly,

All my pages have been SEO's as best as I could, the correct meta-tags for title, description, keywords etc. I did wonder whether it was some form of penalty? but given that it has been reported by a number of people who's sites have been running for a long time it seems unlikely.

One guy in 'webmasterworld' reported that he has seen his site of 6000 pages drop to only 154 ! - others claim they have actually laid off staff....check it out for yourself.

The funny thing is that my site description Google has placed in the listings has nothing to do with the meta-tags or main content, it's actually the text from a 'strap-line' on a page within the site which is linked to my main menu - go figure??

yogi62