meta description or text from the article?

[jefit]

Sometimes a Google search result shows the article meta description and other times it shows an excerpt from the article. If all my articles have meta descriptions, why does Google pick and choose?

[mjparadac]

Hello jefit

These article could help you:
https://docs.joomla.org/Using_The_Meta_Description
https://support.google.com/webmasters/a ... 5624?hl=en

Hope this helps.
Regards,

[jefit]

Wow! Great links!
Thankyou so much!

[kevinix]

Well... If you do not have meta descriptions, Google extract content from your page and adds it. Check Google search console for duplicate meta descriptions.

[dmorell]

Another thing you should consider is that Google recently changed the displayed meta description length. In the past, it was around 140 characters. Now, as of late 2017, I usually see it between 260 and 320.

According to Google's John Mueller if your site has a shorter meta description Google may pull a longer meta description to display from the content of the page.

In everything, I have read and seen the optimum meta description is around 280 characters.

[alexnguyen]

Hello jefit

These article could help you:
https://docs.joomla.org/Using_The_Meta_Description
https://support.google.com/webmasters/a ... 5624?hl=en

Hope this helps.
Regards,

great links. thank you

[Boshi]

Hey,
the thing is, that if a visitor is searching keywords that you have in your meta description, Google will use your description. If you have the keywords in your page content but not in the meta descriptions, Google probably won’t use your meta tag description.

I did my own little research on this topic https://blog.spotibo.com/meta-description/

Also after the recent change in meta description length, Google usually uses your meta description tag, if it consists a visitor’s searched keyword. Just use focused keywords on each page also in meta description and there is a big change Google will use it.

[schilderijen]

In fact it is entirely up to Google to decide what is shown in the search results.

If Google think they have a better description for either meta title or description than you, then they show that instead.

[Maulikshah]

By the recent algorithms update, Searchenginland and Searchenginejournal confirmed that Google allows around 300 characters in SERP descriptions.

As per my knowledge, Google will pick up best relevant content portion from web page to serves best related result in SERP. So that type of fluctuation happen based on search queries.