Google is not a directory it is a search engine, because of the way it is set up, it does not have a set description of your site. The only constant is your page title. The content Google shows is called a 'snippet' it takes the text tht contains the terms searched for, and displays them to the user to help the user gauge relevance.

This is one of the reasons you should put thought into your on page copy, so that when search engines rip out the snippet, it makes sense out of context.

Google no longer displays your meta description in the SERPs (normaly). This is a move on their part to stop descriptions being displayed that are what the Spammer wants you to see.

Google now displays the "Visible" text sourounding or in close proximity to the first occurence of the complete search term or scattered searched words if the actual phrase is not present. I realise this is a statement waiting to be shot down by quoting multitudinous examples, but it holds true two thirds of the time.

Note the number of times that Google includes "Nav Link Text" as part of the description

This also means that the description extracted by Google can and does vary according to the search term entered.

There are also some quirky complications with this but if you engineer your pages with this in mind, you will tend get what you want displayed for complete search phrases that are present early in the body of your page.

Oh my...

Not true in all cases, Smeagain.

I respect your opinion on certain matters, but the, "one shoe fits all", well, hey, I disagree with you. I still respect your input though. And I thank you for it.

Paul

I thought I chose my words carefully enough to convey likely "Varience" in the Google selected snippett. I even used the phrase " it holds true two thirds of the time".

This is one of several behaviours where Google seems to use "Percys Variable Constant"

Google will on occasion disply the snippet from the description if it is deemed to be the most relevant, relevant to the Google way of things that is lol

"but it holds true two thirds of the time"

Oh Sorry, I didn't see that.

My bad.

Paul :bonk:

There is a way to coax Google into displaying the "Description" from your page, but to do it you need to compromise the optimisation of the page itself ending up somewhat lower in the SERPs therefore it's a bit counterproductive.

Much better to manipulate the contents of the opening sentence or two. This way the page optimisation is maintained and in many cases this manipulation can improve the SERPs for the targetted term or phrase.

Be careful however if the page is already heavily optimised that you don't trigger an OOP filter.