Will Google Always Use My Meta Description Tag?

When you look at your listings in Google on some occasions the description part of the snippet may not always be your Meta description.

The reason for this is that Google always wants to return the most relevant information to the searcher and your Meta description may not be the most relevant text to show. This will depend on what the searcher types into the search engine. For example, the search query text may appear half way down your page. Showing the Meta description may not be the best fit for this query. So instead of showing the Meta tag Google may display a block of text that contains the search query. See an example from the Cozy Digital website below.

If you did a search for “ecommerce development” you can see below that Google will return Cozy Digital’s Meta Description.

However, if you do a search for a more targeted query “ecommerce features and benefits” Google will actually return a snippet from the actual page content.

The snippet as it appears on the webpage.

So you can see that Google will not always use the Meta description and will try to return the most relevant snippet available. Google also sometimes return the ODP – Open Directory Project listing if it feels that this is more relevant or if your website was down at the time that Google cached your website.

Below is a video hosted by Matt Cutts, the head of spam at Google describing this in more detail.

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About Graham Lyons

Graham is the SEO and Social Media Marketing Manager at Cozy Digital and the editor of the Cozy Digital Blog as well as contributing content for most of our social outlets like Facebook, Twitter and G+. Graham has been working in, and writing for the SEO / SMM industry since 2001 and is still as dedicated and passionate today as he was when he opened his first Website Design, Ecommerce and SEO company in 2004. You can connect with Graham and Cozy Digital via the social media links below:

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