Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
In the Google's SERP listing they list the sites starting with their title and small fraction of paragraph as description from content sections. However when I do "site:example.com" in Google, except 9 pages none of them shows any keywords from content paragraph (only anchor text of menu items are displayed). Some of those pages are completely genuine work of mine and would draw considerable amount of traffic if shown properly by Google. None of my pages contains same page title and duplicate content I think.
When I type similar query in MSN I find no anomaly and all the pages are listed with their correct descriptions, can anybody suggest where lies the problems, I have optimized all my pages for keywords taken from inventory.overture.com. I individually checked those pages for their keywords by typing command "site:example.com/absent_page 'keywords from that page'" it returns no results.
[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 5:25 am (utc) on April 17, 2007]
It sounds like you're talking about the "snippet" or description returned by Google. I may not have understood your question completely, though, in which case I may need to change the title of this thread some more.
As I re-read your post, it sounds like you're more unhappy with the snippet returned when you use the site: operator than when you use regular search.
Each engine has its own way of returning descriptions returned. Google first looks for word matches in your meta description tag, and if it doesn't find them there, it looks for matches on the page, starting with the text at the top and working its way down. This is query specific. Often, you need to adjust your meta description to work best with the most likely searches for which the page will rank.
The site: operator should, I think, return the meta description since there's no specific query present.
From your description, I'm thinking you may in fact not have a meta description, or at least not one with your main keywords... and that what you're seeing is anchor text from the top of your page. This is a frequent problem with snippets
I suggest that you try adjusting the first 150 characters of your meta description to include phrases the page will rank on. On some engines, for some queries, you may always see your link anchor text.
I understand what you mean to say that if I enter some keywords only then the description from my page will be shown, but that doesn't work here again.
If you want to check your web page for a particular keywords just do "site:example.com keywords"
All the pages containing that keywords will be displayed but for my site if I take most prominent keywords from headings it does not return any result.
If you want to check your web page for a particular keywords just do "site:example.com keywords"All the pages containing that keywords will be displayed but for my site if I take most prominent keywords from headings it does not return any result.
I'm not sure whether you're asking only about site:example.com keywords searches, or whether you're also asking about general rankings for these keywords.
It may be that the keywords in your headings aren't used appropriately on the rest of your page, or in your page titles.
It may also be that you haven't been indexed long enough in Google for your pages to rank. How long has your site been indexed in Google? How old are your inbound links? It can often take nine months to a year to rank... and it's extremely difficult to rank on single word searches, if that's what you're trying to do.
You have to evaluate how competitive your search targets are, and understand what it takes to rank on them.
Here's an old thread that's still useful in listing the basic ranking factors...
[webmasterworld.com...]
The fifth post on that thread, msg #:267608, and some of the messages that follow, are rough lists that still apply regarding some of the things you need to pay attention to. On Google, site age and link age are also now big factors.
< moderator note: see Supplemental Results: What exactly are they [webmasterworld.com] in our Hot topics section >
If you can help me out from this with any suggestion that would be great.
[edited by: tedster at 6:10 pm (utc) on April 19, 2007]
