There is a myth that the description is the most uncontrollable part of the snippet. Fickle Google ignores the meta tag description (although it exists) and automatically selects a snippet of text that may not be the most suitable. The truth is that fortunately there are some tools for managing snippets.
What is a snippet?
A snippet is information about a website displayed in search results, including the site name (1), URL (2), title (3), site icon (4), description (5), publication date (6), as well as images and other additional data depending on the content of the website page.
What is a description in a snippet?
A brief description, usually a couple of sentences, of the source page of a snippet. It complements the title and allows for a better understanding of the page's content.
The purpose of the description, like the entire snippet, is to guide the visitor from the search engine results page to the specific website page. This means that the snippet description should accurately and concisely convey the page's content, providing a quick overview of the page and encouraging the visitor to click through.
Qualities of a good snippet description:
The description is generated by Google, so you cannot simply enter it into the search results. However, you can create a meta description tag on your website, which Google takes into account. If well-crafted, there is a high likelihood that the description will be displayed in the snippet.
Relevance. The description, like the title, should correspond to the topic of the page. The snippet forms certain expectations in the visitor's mind regarding the section of the site that the link leads to. The description should be written in such a way that these expectations are met.
Conciseness. The description cannot be more than two lines in Google search results, which is roughly 150-160 characters. On mobile devices, the limit is even smaller, typically three lines, which is about 130-140 characters. If the description includes a date (creation or publication of the material), the limit will be even shorter. If the limit is exceeded, the description will be automatically truncated. Therefore, you should consider the limit and place the most important information at the beginning of the meta description.
Substantiveness. A brief text that captures the essence of the page in 130-150 characters. The description should reveal the essence of the page without unnecessary words, complementing the title.
Not a list of tags. The description should be concise and substantive, but it should not simply be a list of keywords or phrases. Keywords related to the website or page's theme are positive factors because they help visitors form an accurate impression of the page. Therefore, the description can contain keywords but should be in the form of normal sentences.
The meta description is primarily written for people, not search engines, so it should be clear, accurate, and attractive to visitors.
Each page of the website should have its own meta description.
Choose a query of interest and check the snippets in the top positions of Google search results - there may be successful examples of descriptions among them.
How Google creates snippet descriptions
Google actually creates descriptions automatically, taking into account the information on the page and the meta tag description. Automatic description creation is not a whim or a system error. Google forms the description for a specific query, selecting the most relevant information according to its algorithms. That is, the description of the same page in search, for different queries, may be different.
In theory, automatic snippet creation is an excellent solution. However, in practice, it doesn't always work out as well as one would like.
Tools for managing snippet descriptions in Google
Do not forget that the most obvious way to manage the page description is by editing the content. In addition to simply editing the text, you can control the Google search robot by:
-
specifying what text you want to see as the description (meta tag description and the description property in microdata);
-
limiting or prohibiting the formation of a snippet based on certain elements (meta tag nosnippet, meta tag max-snippet, data-nosnippet attribute).
1. Meta tag description is a brief description of the page content that is set on the website side. This description is used by search engines as one of the factors to determine how the page should be displayed in search results.
The meta description is placed in the head of the page. Example of description:
<head>
<meta name="description" content="Что такое метатег description? Чем отличается от описания в сниппете?">
</head>
By defining the text in the website settings as "description," you are essentially telling the search engine robot, "Hey, Google, I want this text to appear in the search results, under the heading." And Google understands and takes this into account. However, there are no guarantees that the description under the heading will be taken from the description you provided. As mentioned earlier, Google generates the snippet description based on the search query entered.
In addition to the description, there is another way to indicate to Google which text you consider most suitable as a description. This is called microdata or structured data.
2. Description in structured data is a brief description of a separate item, such as a product, organization, or article.
There are three types of syntax for microdata: Microdata, RDFa, and JSON-LD. You can choose one of these formats to use on your website. The most commonly used ones are JSON-LD and Microdata. Some websites use both types of microdata, which validators do not consider to be an error. These types of structured data help Google and other search engines read information about the pages on your website and display it in the search results.
There are also microformats developed by Facebook (OpenGraph) and Twitter. OpenGraph and Twitter microformats are used in parallel with microformats like JSON-LD or Microdata, and serve to correctly display social media information about a website page when links to the site are posted on these platforms. With social media microformats, you can control and improve the appearance of your content on Facebook and Twitter.
Google recommends JSON-LD as the preferred format, which is easier to configure for individual elements. However, not all search engines are well-versed in working with js microformats, so in some cases, Microdata may be the optimal format, which is also well-perceived by Google bots.
Joomla 4 has built-in elements of structured data in the form of Microdata in the layouts of articles and other types of pages. There are also extensions available to add microformats in JSON-LD format.
Unlike meta descriptions, the "description" property in structured data does not always apply to the entire page. Structured data pertains to individual elements, of which there may be several on a page. For example, a page may have multiple products, in which case the description for each product will be unique, just like the "description" property.
However, in the case of an element such as an "Article", the meta description and the "description" property of the structured data should have the same content. It would be odd to fill the meta tag description and the description property of the microdata with different data on the same page with an article.
For an element of the page such as "Breadcrumbs" (BreadcrumbList), the description property is not applicable.
The complete list of types of structured data can be found here: https://schema.org/docs/full.html. The most popular microdata scheme in web development, Schema.org, contains hundreds of types of structured data and their properties.
To check a website page for the presence of any errors in structured data, you can use the Google validator: https://search.google.com/test/rich-results
The Schema.org validator can be found here: https://validator.schema.org/
Microdata for Articles (an Article type element) including the description property in JSON-LD format can look like the following:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "Article title",
"description": "Brief but informative description of the article",
"author": {
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Author's name"
},
"datePublished": "2023-04-14",
"dateModified": "2023-04-14",
"publisher": {
"@type": "Organization",
"name": "Name of the organization",
"logo": {
"@type": "ImageObject",
"url": "https://example.com/logo.png",
"width": 600,
"height": 60
}
},
"mainEntityOfPage": {
"@type": "WebPage",
"@id": "https://example.com/article"
}
}
</script>
The microdata script is added inside the head or body tags on a website page, remaining invisible to visitors.
Example of Microdata article:
<article itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">
<h1 itemprop="headline">Article title</h1>
<p itemprop="description">Brief but informative description of the article</p>
<div itemprop="articleBody">
<p>Article text...</p>
</div>
<div itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">
<span itemprop="name">Author's name</span>
</div>
<div itemprop="publisher" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization">
<span itemprop="name">Name of the organization</span>
<div itemprop="logo" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject">
<img src="//logo.png" itemprop="url" alt="Logo">
</div>
</div>
<meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2023-04-14">
<meta itemprop="dateModified" content="2023-04-14">
</article>
3. nosnippet meta tag prohibits the automatic creation of page descriptions.
To apply this tag to the pages of a website, you need to add the following code to the <head> section (of the entire website or individual pages):
<meta name="robots" content="nosnippet">
4. Meta tag max-snippet:[number] - limits the description to a maximum number of characters.
The maximum number is no more than 90 characters and looks like this:
<meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:90">
If the value is set to "-1", there are no limitations.
5. HTML attribute data-nosnippet prohibits the use of text within a tag as the basis for generating a snippet description.
For example, it is necessary to prohibit the following text, located within the div tags:
<div data-nosnippet>The more accurate and informative the description is, the more likely the visitor is to click on the link to your website.</div>
The marked text will not participate in the auto-generation of descriptions. The code must not contain errors, otherwise, the data-nosnippet attribute will not work.
This only works with tags: div, span, and section. If your content is enclosed in other tags, replace them with one of the three types (div, span, section), or add the specified tags (inside or outside tags of another type) so that the necessary information is inside them. For example, there is a numbered list that is not suitable for description in search results:
<div data-nosnippet>
<!-- The entire text below, enclosed in <div>...</div> tags, will be prohibited from being used for descriptions in Google, including paragraphs (p) and numbered lists (ol)-->
<p>Rich snippets are visual elements in Google search results that provide additional information about the page. The elements of rich snippets may include:</p>
<ol>
<li>1. Product reviews.</li>
<li>2. Rating (based on user reviews).</li>
<li>3. Prices.</li>
<li>4. Schedule.</li>
<li>5. Map.</li>
</ol>
</div>
Using the data-nosnippet attribute, you can exclude not only fragments directly from the article but also fragments in the website layouts that display technical information that somehow ended up in the snippet description.
As we have seen, it is possible to control descriptions in the snippet by editing the meta description, structured data, and directly the page text. These three tools: nosnippet, max-snippet:[number], and data-nosnippet are an indirect but excellent opportunity to manage descriptions in Google through exceptions.