How is my meta description being generated

Resolved lindaph1
(@lindaph1)

5 years, 9 months ago

Hi

I’ve added a link to the Google output when I search for my site Healthy Happy Woman.

What I’ve noticed is that the meta description is exactly the same for every entry on the page when I use Yoast SEO to write the meta description. What shows is the content of the first of the three footer widgets in the site.

When I don’t use Yoast SEO to write the meta descriptions then the first few lines of the post appears instead as a much more appropriate meta description.

Can you give me some insight into why this is happening and what, if anything, I can do about it?

Thanks in anticipation

The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

Thread Starter lindaph1
(@lindaph1)

5 years, 9 months ago

BTW the site is https://www.healthyhappywoman.co.uk

Pcosta88
(@pcosta88)

5 years, 9 months ago

Hi,

You identified several issues. We have responded to them below.

A. Duck Duck Go
We see you send us a link to your website in Duck Duck go but mentioned Google in the original post. Did you have a specific question about how your site is appearing in Duck Duck Go?

B. Google
We looked in Google here and we can see that different meta descriptions are appearing for different URLs.

If Google is not outputting the right meta description can you provide a direct link to a page that has the issue?

Thread Starter lindaph1
(@lindaph1)

5 years, 9 months ago

Thanks for getting back to me and sorry, I use duck duck go as my search engine in Firefox and I thought I’d sent you a link to the Google search results.

Have a look at these two pages which have the same meta description on duck duck go even though I’ve set the description differently. Looking at the code will show you the meta description I’ve added I think, but that’s not what duck duck go shows!

The same thing happens with Edge and Bing. Google seems random and seems to show either the first or second widget or the snippet. It’s all really odd.

https://healthyhappywoman.co.uk/happiness/resistance-is-futile/
https://healthyhappywoman.co.uk/health/things-i-know-to-be-true-1-we-are-all-walking-miracles/
https://healthyhappywoman.co.uk/hysteria/on-writing-prompts/

Pcosta88
(@pcosta88)

5 years, 9 months ago

Hi,

We will break this down by search engine

A. Duck Duck Go and Bing
Duck Duck Go pulls from other search engines to show its results, such as from Bing. If the URL is appearing correct on Bing it is likely to also appear correct on Duck Duck Go.

We looked at an example URL like https://healthyhappywoman.co.uk/happiness/resistance-is-futile/ and can confirm Yoast is outputting the meta description correctly. See image: https://pasteboard.co/JgqpeH2.png

However, we can see in Bing here it is not showing that.

If you clear all your caching and then use Fetch as Bingbot: https://www.bing.com/webmaster/help/fetch-as-bingbot-fe18fa0d does the issue resolve? This will force Bing (and eventually Duck Duck Go) to update the index and hopefully show the right meta.

B. Google
We can see Google is showing the right meta description here.

If Google is showing different meta descriptions when you search, to resolve the issue we suggest three actions:

1. We ask that you improve the meta description. Google sometimes changes the meta description to be more descriptive and to help users when they search. This guide explains more: https://yoast.com/help/my-meta-descriptions-arent-showing-up-in-the-search-result-pages/. You can learn more about improving them with this guide: https://yoast.com/meta-descriptions/.

2. Then use Inspect Any URL to encourage Google to reindex the page and update the search results accordingly. Check in Google to see if the right one then appears. This guide explains more about that tool: https://yoast.com/help/fetch-as-googlebot/.

3. Consider contacting Google by making a post on their forum and asking them why Googlebot is changing the meta description. You may contact Google here: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

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