Meta Description - use 'and', ampersand or ascii code? - Google Search and SEO forum at WebmasterWorld

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Meta Description - use 'and', ampersand or ascii code?

StaceyJ

1:37 pm on May 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

I'm re-writing some META Descriptions due to some page changes and find myself using the word and sometimes 2-3 times. I know, I should probably re-write it to get rid of and, but in some cases it reads better using and than breaking things up into short, choppy sentences that don't flow as well.

So, which, if any, is the better choice, outside of the fact that the word is 3 characters and the symbol is only 1 character. Using the word itself or the & symbol.

And if it's the symbol, should I use the symbol itself, or the ascii code. I never thought about it before outside of on page markup, but in META tags is it better to use the symbol or the ascii code if that is the choice, or does it matter here?

Thanks

tedster

5:02 pm on May 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

When I look at search results for sites that use entities in their descriptions, I see them show up as text strings - in other words I literally see "&" - no good. Using the bare ampersand is not technically valid, but it seems to work out OK in practice today. It still might be a problem for some older browsers or non-Google processing, such as other search engines and directories.

The safest practice: use the word "and" or write more economical descriptions. In some cases the plus sign can work, too.

vero

6:20 pm on May 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

Or use a comma instead of "and"
<meta name="Description" content="Learn about red widgets, green widgets, white widgets">

StaceyJ

6:39 pm on May 16, 2008 (gmt 0)

tedster, as usual, thanks for the detailed reply. I don't remember ever seeing the "&" text string myself in the serps (although I may have), but that's one of things I was concerned about. I've rewrote a few to avoid some "ands" and just used the word itself like I've always done in the others. I was just thinking if we could use the ampersand instead it would save 2 characters each use. Probably not worth it.

vero, thanks for the suggestion, but where I'm using "and" isn't in a list type environment. It's more along the lines of "Get this widget and more widgets..." where a comma won't suffice.