Weekly SEO News January 5-12
Google primarily uses the content on the page to automatically determine the appropriate snippet. We may also use descriptive information in the meta description element when it describes the page better than other parts of the content.
Snippets are automatically created from page content. Snippets are designed to emphasize and preview the page content that best relates to a user's specific search. This means that Google Search might show different snippets for different searches.
Snippets are primarily created from the page content itself. However, Google sometimes uses the meta description HTML element if it might give users a more accurate description of the page than content taken directly from the page.
Best practices for creating quality meta descriptions
Google will sometimes use the <meta name="description"> tag from a page to generate a snippet in search results, if we think it gives users a more accurate description than would be possible purely from the on-page content. A meta description tag generally informs and interests users with a short, relevant summary of what a particular page is about.
Identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site aren't helpful when individual pages appear in search results. Wherever possible, create descriptions that accurately describe the specific page.
The meta description doesn't just have to be in sentence format; it's also a great place to include information about the page. For example, news or blog postings can list the author, date of publication, or byline information. This can give potential visitors very relevant information that might not be displayed in the snippet otherwise. For some sites, like news media sources, generating an accurate and unique description for each page is easy: since each article is hand-written, it takes minimal effort to also add a one-sentence description. For larger database-driven sites, like product aggregators, hand-written descriptions can be impossible. In the latter case, however, programmatic generation of the descriptions can be appropriate and are encouraged. Good descriptions are human-readable and diverse. Page-specific data is a good candidate for programmatic generation.
Make sure your descriptions are truly descriptive. Because meta descriptions aren't displayed in the pages the user sees, it's easy to let this content slide. But high-quality descriptions can be displayed in Google's search results, and can go a long way to improving the quality and quantity of your search traffic.
Click on the link for some good and bad snippet examples.
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Google Search Liasion on X answered if author bylines are a ranking factor and if Google checks it: “Author bylines aren't something you do for Google, and they don't help you rank better. They're something you do for your readers -- and publications doing them may exhibit the type of other characteristics our ranking systems find align with useful content.”
Google on X explained the perfect page formula: Today I wanted to share about the belief that there is some type of “perfect page” formula that must be used to rank highly in Google Search. There isn't, and no one should feel they must work to some type of mythical formula. It’s a belief dating back to even before Google was popular, as I wrote about when I was a journalist in 2000, in the article below. As was the case then, so it remains true now. There’s no perfect formula to follow.
There are any number of third party SEO tools that might advise that a page should be a certain number of words long or somehow constructed in a particular way for success in search. Third party advice, even news articles, might suggest some type of thing. Following such advice doesn’t guarantee a top ranking. Moreover, such predictions and advice is often based on looking at averages — which misses the point that completely different and unique pages can and do succeed in search.
Google's key advice is to focus on doing things for your readers that is helpful. For example, if it makes sense for your readers to see a byline for an article (and it might!), do it for them. Don't do it because you've heard having a byline ranks you better in Google (it doesn't).
Put your readers and audience first. Be helpful to them. If you do this, if you're doing things for them, you are more likely to align with completely different signals we use to reward content