Where does the Description Come From for Google?

As we all know, along with the title, the description that a search engine uses for your site in a SERP can have a significant impact on whether or not someone chooses to click on your link.

Apparently, the rules have changed recently.

We are now seeing a preference for DMOZ descriptions where available, as well as an apparent devaluing of text snippets, which I always kind of liked (easier to see garbage phrases associated with poorly made doorway pages etc)

I responded to a question about descriptions in a thread in the High Rankings Forum and a member pointed out that, based on my own data, the rules had apparently changed since the last time I looked at them. So I checked further.

Here is the data I came up with.

The problem is that many people use the same description for DMOZ as they do for their homepage description, so now we have to be very careful about assuming that the description that is being shown is being pulled from the meta description and not DMOZ, since they may be identical.

Since I know my site (McAnerin Networks) is in DMOZ and has a different meta description on page, I'll use it as a test subject. I know my meta tags are valid and not broken, due to testing I did earlier for an article and meta-tag generator, so that will eliminate that as a possible factor for anything.

Note that this site sells SEO services, but I'm not currently taking new clients without referrals, so please don't consider this as promotional - it's just the site I know best.

INITIAL DATA

Page: mcanerin.com homepage

Meta Description: Website promotion company specializing in cross-border internet marketing. Offices in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and Las Vegas. Free ranking report, SEO tools

DMOZ Description: Offers Internet and website promotion, search engine optimization and search engine submission. Includes location.

Page Title: Website Promotion Internet Marketing - McAnerin Networks Inc.

Keywords Tested: mcanerin, internet promotion canada, website promotion canada, internet promotion USA, mcanerin internet marketing, mcanerin seo, mcanerin website promotion

Keywords for this have been chosen a combination of either being in or not in the description, as well as causing the site to show up easily, rather than actually being keywords I target for marketing purposes, which is irrelevant here.

The name "mcanerin" does not appear in either description, but is in the domain, title and many incoming links. It is also in the body text and headers on the page being tested.

TESTS (using Google)

mcanerin: Offers Internet and website promotion, search engine optimization and search engine submission. Includes location. (DMOZ Description)

mcanerin internet marketing: Website promotion company specializing in cross-border internet marketing. Offices in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and Las Vegas. (Meta Description)

mcanerin seo: ... Ian McAnerin, founder of MNI, is one of the best known SEO's in Canada, and speaks frequently. He has also has written many articles and is currently ... (Text Snippet)

mcanerin website promotion: Offers Internet and website promotion, search engine optimization and search engine submission. Includes location. (DMOZ Description)

internet promotion canada: Offers Internet and website promotion, search engine optimization and search ... Website and Internet Promotion. In the US and Canada, website promotion can ... (Combination of DMOZ + Text Snippet)

website promotion canada: ... In the US and Canada, website promotion can take many forms, including search engine optimization ( SEO ), directory and search engine submission, ... (Text Snippet)

internet promotion USA: Offers Internet and website promotion, search engine optimization and search engine submission. Includes location. (DMOZ Description)

CONCLUSION

I found it very interesting that although "mcanerin" was used frequently on the page, Google usually chose not to use a text snippet containing it.

By itself, it triggered a DMOZ description. Combined with words contained only in the meta description, it triggered the meta description, and combined with words only contained on the page, triggered a text snippet.

The rules seem to be:

1. Use the DMOZ Description as default
2. If the terms appear in both descriptions, use DMOZ
3. If some terms appear in order (exactly) in DMOZ but not all, use DMOZ
4. If some terms appear in DMOZ but not in order, use DMOZ + a text snippet containing the remainder.
5. If none of the terms appear in DMOZ but do in the meta, use the meta
6. If the terms do not appear in either description, use a text snippet
7. If the terms appear exactly (order does not matter, but must be beside each other) in the text but not in either description, use a text snippet.

There may be other rules, but that's what it looks like so far.

I was interested to see the results of a site that is not in DMOZ, so I used a client. Due to client confidentiality issues, I won't disclose the URL or keywords used.

The client is a PR 7 pharmacy that does not have it's DMOZ application reviewed yet. It ranks very well organically for it's keywords, however.

Search 1: keyword is in both text and meta description exactly. Description is shown.

Search 2: keyword is in text only. Text snippet is shown.

Search 3: keyword is in both text and meta description but out of order: text snippet is shown

Search 4: exact keyword is in meta description only: shows meta description, but not of home page? Shows the meta of a PR 0 page buried in the depths of a dynamic system. This is the same meta description as the home page (PR7).

Odd...That last search is unexpected. Can anyone confirm this behavior with a different site?That's my information so far. I'd be interested in seeing what others get

I made a chart suggesting the order of priority - please not that this is under heavy testing and is probably not accurate yet - I'd appreciate additional information that might make it accurate.

"Exact" means the keywords are right next to each other, "Spread" means they are in the same sentance or paragraph, but not next to each other. "Partial" means that only some of the words exist in the description.

Possible Order of Preference (not fully tested)

1. DMOZ Exact
2. Meta Exact
3. Text Exact
4. DMOZ Spread
5. Text Spread
6. Meta Spread
7. DMOZ Partial
8. Text Partial
9. Meta Partial

No On-Page Usage: DMOZ, then Meta.

Will only use a maximum of two sources in the case of partials.

Should you write for Search Engines or Human Readers?

There is writing for readers and there is writing for the search engines. I think there are problems with both. Worse, I think many times people get confused as to who the visitors actually are.

The medium can affect the message. For example - Flash is 100% about visitors to the website. It's as written for visitors as you can get - no interest in keyword density, header tags, KW positioning etc. And search engines hate it.

Yet if you are aiming for a 14 year old gaming buff, it's the perfect medium - all that boring text in a document that focused on useability or SE (Search Engine) friendlieness just would not get read.

But how would that 14 year old actually *find* the site in the first place?

A search engine IS a visitor to your website. It's just as relevant to write for that visitor as it is to write for others.

Question: What if your website appealed to 20-something females AND 40-something males? How would you write for it? Would you create 2 separate sites, write only for one group, or try to catch as many of your important visitors as possible?

I would try to catch as many as possible.

Why shouldn't you consider a search engine to be yet another important visitor? Not the most important, but not the least, either. This particular visitor never actually buys anything from you, but does tend to refer a lot of potential buyers, so this visitor is not to be ignored by smart owners.

At the same time, you don't focus on the visitor that refers lots of potential buyers and forget about the actual buyers - that's really stupid - what's the point of getting refferals if you turn them off when you finally get them to your site?

You should focus on both types of visitors, IMO - your human visitors represent today's paycheck, your search engine visitors represent tomorrows.

I would not ignore either.Write for both. Use search engine friendly techniques to write human friendly content. It's that simple. Don't focus only on one or the other.

A bonus is that SE friendly almost always equals human usablity - so you are already dealing with that aspect of it.

Likewise, if you are truly interested in making things easy for your visitors, you will find you are helping your SE efforts are being helped, too.

A search engine IS a visitor. Write for ALL your visitors, not just one group.

Ian

Search Marketing Association

I recently got back from a quick trip to London, England. It was a pretty interesting experience, as it was business, but pleasurable all the same.

In late November, a good friend of mine, Christine Churchill contacted me to ask if I wanted to be nominated as a director of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), which at the time of writing is the closest thing we SEO's have to a trade association.

A long time ago SEMPO got themselves into a bit of a flap because they had incorporated themselves as a Non-Profit, but then proceeded to break almost every rule known that non-profits are supposed to follow. It was a real mess. Christine, one of the hardest working and most well meaning people I know, knew that I was pretty much the only SEO *she* knew with a legal background that might be helpful, and she somehow sweet-talked me into joining and helping sort out the mess.

I learned a lot, going through the paperwork and dealing with the behind-the-scenes politics and personalities. I also discovered that although SEMPO is, in my opinion, fundamentally broken, there are a lot of very good people who joined it because it's clear the industry needs a trade association.

The problem is that SEMPO is designed to cash in on big bucks sponsors and SEO firms. Key members have even stated that small SEO firms are "not their target audience".

To me, that was unforgivable. Small SEO firms and single SEO's working in IT departments form the vast majority of this industry. How can you claim to be an industry association if the industry is not your target audience? I have it on good authority that Google and Overture agree with me on this one.

So when Chris asked me if I wanted to be nominated as a director, my first instinct was to agree, and work from within. The problem is that the major people who were supporters of the "little guy/gal" had resigned (like Chris) or were not planning on renewing their memberships - effectively a slow motion, passive resignation. The remaining executive was heavily linked together, and even though there were many really good people who were nominated as directors, I had a sinking feeling that I could predict the "old guard" retaining control, just reorganized.

In the meantime, I had been quietly working away in Calgary, Canada trying to form the Internet Marketing Association of Canada. I'd got some interest from some high profile members like KS2 (Yellowpages.ca), Critical Mass, Anduro, Telus, and a few others. But I was concerned about membership levels being able to support the costs of running an industry group with just Canadians. Small country, but big ideas :)

Chris mentioned that AdWords expert Andrew Goodman (a fellow Canuck) had tried to get together the SMA-CA and had difficulties getting the initial membership levels. Now, the SMA - That's an idea! Take everything good about an industry group, add in effective, fair structure and a genuine concern for the industry rather than fund raising and you have the SMA.

The original SMA was designed as a reaction to SEMPO being out of touch with the rest of the world. Although it claims to be an international body, it's very much a USA only club with a few foreigners thrown in for good measure (a result of following the dollars and sponsors instead of the members).

A clear example of this was when they formed the European committee without, for example, any real input from any, you know, Europeans. Then acted surprised when there were huge objections to it's structure and purpose.

Many very high profile members form the UK (the second largest SEM market in the world) decided that enough was enough. Led by Barry Lloyd, Andy Atkins-Kruger, Paddy Bolger, Richard Gregory, Edward Cowell, Colin Irwin, Simon Collingridge, Jason Cartwright, Ammon Johns, and Mike Grehan, they formed the SMA-UK. A lot of thought went into it, and they deftly avoided the scandals that had rocked SEMPO repeatedly (link-gate, selfpromotion-gate, etc).

Shortly after the success of SMA-UK, the SMA-EU (European Union) was formed, with members Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Ben van den Bergh, Shakil Khan, Alix Jalon, Vincent Israel, Thomas Bindl, Laszlo Fazakas, and Sante Achille.

While talking with her about this, I had what I think is a great idea - form the SMA-NA (North America). After all, we have NAFTA to balance the EU - why not? This solved the membership numbers issue and the USA only issue in one stroke, and also addressed the opportunity to avoid the rot that had already set in with SEMPO.

Christine put me in touch with Mike G and Barry L., and I was invited to fly out to London on Dec 21 to a meeting between a couple of members of the SMA-UK and the founding members of the SMA-EU. The purpose of the meeting was to formally kick off the SMA-EU, and I attended as an observer. This was very interesting to me because the EU is pretty hetrogenous compared to the UK and I was very interested in how they would deal with issues such as multiple languages, vastly different legal systems, etc - since these would be issues in North America.

The meeting went really well and meeting everyone was excellent. I was even able to make the occasional useful comment and observation, though mostly I listened.

I've now come back, and am forming the SMA-NA. Just before I hit the "make new group" button on Yahoo Groups to launch the beginning of the working group, I phoned up Barbara Coll (SEMPO President) to resign. Since I was a member of the election committee, I felt (and Barb vehemently agreed) that it would be a conflict of interest for me to be a committee member in SEMPO while starting up the SMA-NA.

Although the majority of the conversation was confidential, it was made very clear that SEMPO considers the SMA-NA to be a direct threat and a competitor for membership and sponsor dollars. Interesting that the SMA-UK and EU were not considered the same way. To me, that really confirmed the regional blinkers SEMPO wears. The concern about the money rather than the industry was also very interesting. Although it was mentioned that the industry would be better off with only one group (I agree BTW ;) ) this was mentioned in direct relation to funding.
She also repeatedly demanded the names of the others on the SMA-NA working group. Since they had not been confirmed yet, I didn't answer, but the message was clear: SMA members were not welcome in SEMPO. Pity. Personally, I think that all support of the SEO/SEM industry is a good thing, and I'd rather someone support SEMPO than not support anything. I guess they don't see it that way.

It seemed to me it was kind of like if the Red Cross said that you can't donate to UNICEF - it's one or the other. Odd - I thought the goals were more lofty than membership fees. Perhaps for SEMPO the goal of helping the industry is at odds wth the goal of getting funding. A telling point, in my opinion. It certainly clear my mind of any doubts as to whether I was doing the right thing, I'll tell you that!

We now have a working group for the SMA-NA. In view of the threats by SEMPO and the very real desire of many members of the working group to contribute to the industry as a whole regardless of venue, I'll let them list themselves. It's pretty clear that key people are interested in leaving the sinking ship, though.

So that's what I've been up to. There is more SMA information here from Threadwatch, which for some reason I've become quite fond of ;)

http://www.threadwatch.org/node/155
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/263
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/269
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/273
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/906

Some additional (Mostly SEMPO related) links for your viewing pleasure:

http://www.sempo-tahoe.com/ (Joke Site)
http://www.e-marketing-news.co.uk/Dec04/SEMPO-departure.html
http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/article.php/3405021
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=775
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=1051
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showforum=43

Ian