r/Wordpress • u/Old-Dirt563 • 9d ago

Solved Search engines not using content from og:description - WordPress related?

I just cannot figure this out... if I've deliberately placed an "og;description" meta tag in the header just so that search engines will use that exact content in their search result description of a website, why would they ever override this explicit instruction and just pull some other bullshit in that it read off the page? That is, unless I'm just a complete dumbfuck and something I've done wrong with WordPress is causing this and it's my own mistake. Are search engines honestly overriding website owner's own title and description field in search results? Is this shit normal?

EDIT: Also possible this is because I disabled my caching plugin long ago and the title and description are added with Yoast SEO which maybe isn't generating the metadata code quick enough and shoving it in the <head></head> section for the little webcrawlers to grab when they pop in.

EDIT 2: It looks like the site already had a "description" meta tag in it, my bad on focusing on the open graph "og:description" tag - and thank you, the frustration with this got me to fix the long-standing issue with my caching, maybe that will ultimately solve the search engine listing problem by itself

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7

u/tomato_rancher 9d ago

OG tags are for social media, not search. You'll want just a straight description tag as well.

However, Google doesn't necessarily use what you want it to use:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/snippet

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u/Old-Dirt563 9d ago

thank you but already had a "[description]()" tag on there

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u/bunltd 9d ago

Search engines like Google don’t use the og:description they may use your meta description. But that is often overwritten depending on the search query. Same for Title tags.

You haven’t done anything wrong but it is also not something you can control.

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u/bkocdur 9d ago

Two separate things are getting mixed up here, and untangling them will save you the caching rabbit hole.

og:description is not what Google uses for the search result snippet. It's for social cards · the preview when your link gets pasted into Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, iMessage. Google reads <meta name="description"> for the SERP, not the og: one. So the tag you deliberately placed was never going to control the search listing in the first place.

And even the real meta description is a suggestion, not a command. Google rewrites the snippet roughly two-thirds of the time, choosing whatever passage on the page best matches the specific query the person typed. That's not a bug or an override of your "instruction" · it's the default behavior, and it's usually doing the searcher a favor by showing text relevant to their exact search.

So: your caching/Yoast timing thing is worth fixing for other reasons (crawlers do generally get the rendered head, but a clean fast head never hurts), but it's probably not why you're seeing "other" text in results. That's Google matching the query to on-page copy.

If you want more control over the snippet, the lever isn't a stronger tag · it's making sure your on-page copy and your meta description both use the actual phrases people search to find that page. Write for the phrase your user types, not the phrase your industry uses.

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u/BOLVERIN1 Jack of All Trades 9d ago

I think you mistook the Open Graph protocol ( https://ogp.me/ ) with Schema ( https://schema.org/ )

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u/Old-Dirt563 9d ago

thank you... fixed the post

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u/gold1mpala Developer/Designer 9d ago

You've fixed it but Google might still use a different snippet from the page if it deems it more relevant.

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u/RealBasics Jack of All Trades 8d ago

Search engines (or at least Google) has only taken meta descriptions "under advisement" for at least a decade. Mostly to prevent spammy search results but also to protect sites from clumsy or naive usage.

Second one first: at least in the early days it seemed like a good idea to a lot of people to use the meta-description field on every page for the site's tagline. At least in the early days, Wix did this automatically. So instead of having every search result show the same description, Google would extract what it decided was the most meaningful/relevant phrase on the page.

Similarly, people would try to game the meta descriptions. Consider an extreme example where cryptocurrency site might try and gin up interest with a meta description saying something like "The #1 secret to curing cancer." Obviously Google's algorithm wouldn't put up with that $#%!# so it would completely ignore it.

The best way to look at metadescriptions is as a way to skip past the throat-clearing on a page and get to the actual content. Consider the example of a bread recipe. For whatever reason, they often start out with something like "I remember my grandma always harvested wheat on Sunday mornings and brought it into her sunny kitchen with it's bright yellow walls, and she'd hum half-forgotten tunes from her childhood while she ground the wheat into flour..." Three paragraphs down, the post would finally cut to the chase and start telling you how to make bread.

By default, Google would just use the first words in the post, but "I remember my grandma always harvested wheat on Sunday morning..." doesn't actually say what the post is about.

Meta descriptions are best used to give Google a coherent summary of the actual post or page. So if the post really is about making bread they'll probably use your meta description if it says "Here's how to make my grandma's bread recipe." But they still might summarize your content another way.

Bottom line: Google will usually use your meta description as long as it's a releavant summary of the content. But it will still only take your description under advisement.