Meta description not showing in search engines.

  • Resolved CyrRei88

    (@cyrrei88)


    10 years, 11 months ago

    Hello all,

    I’m about to lose my mind over this issue…Maybe someone can help me with this.
    For some reason Google and the other search engines are not picking up meta descriptions for posts on my blog. I’ve configured everything according to the guide on the yoast website.

    First of all, none of the search engines find the website or any of my posts when searching for the post title or focus keyword. The only way I can find a post on Google is when i search with the entire URL. Once its found on google it doesn’t show the meta description, it just picks up random data such as post date or comment count.

    On the Yoast FAQ page it says the following:

    I’m not seeing a meta description in my section?
    Check whether your theme’s header.php file contains a call to wp_head().

    I checked that and its all there.

    Then I found this on the FAQ:

    My meta descriptions aren’t showing up in the search result pages
    There are two possible issues with a meta description:
    You’re putting out more than one of them due to multiple plugins adding a description, for instance the WordBooker plugin adds a description too but has an option to disable it, other SEO plugins running might be another cause.

    I’m using the Lucid Theme and it does have it’s own SEO options built in, but as far as I know it’s all turned off. I also enabled Force rewrite title in the yoast seo plugin.

    I then stumbled upon this post. In that post they were basically saying that besides the Yoast meta_description();?>, there was another meta description from the template which they had to delete from the header.php

    Here is were I get confused. If I go to one of my posts, for example this one;
    https://www.the-babbling-brooke.com/life/waiting-tables-sucks/, and check the source code of that page, I see the meta description created by the yoast plugin:

    <title>Waiting Tables in Los Angeles - And Why it Sucks | The Babbling Brooke</title>
<meta name="description" content="Waiting tables is rough. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's not. Here are some annoying things I have encountered waiting tables in Los Angeles."/>
<meta name="keywords" content="waiting tables, , Life"/>
<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.the-babbling-brooke.com/life/waiting-tables-sucks/" />
<link rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/105178493483972369208"/>
<link rel="publisher" href="https://plus.google.com/105178493483972369208"/>

    But then when I go to the header.php of my theme i see another description tag:

    <!DOCTYPE html>
<!--[if IE 6]>
<html id="ie6" <?php language_attributes(); ?>>
<![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 7]>
<html id="ie7" <?php language_attributes(); ?>>
<![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 8]>
<html id="ie8" <?php language_attributes(); ?>>
<![endif]-->
<!--[if !(IE 6) | !(IE 7) | !(IE 8)  ]><!-->
<html <?php language_attributes(); ?>>
<!--<![endif]-->
<head>
	<meta charset="<?php bloginfo( 'charset' ); ?>" />
	<title><?php elegant_titles(); ?></title>
	<?php elegant_description(); ?>
	<?php elegant_keywords(); ?>
	<?php elegant_canonical(); ?>

	<?php do_action('et_head_meta'); ?>

    Do I need to delete <?php elegant_description(); ?>, <?php elegant_keywords(); ?>,<?php elegant_canonical(); ?> from the header.php? Or maybe add something to the header.php?

    Thanks in advance for all your help.

    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/wordpress-seo/

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • I did a search for “waiting tables sucks los angeles” (included location to narrow the search results)
    Google.com returned this (in first place, first page SERP)
    “Feb 9, 2014 – Waiting tables is rough. Sometimes it’s great, sometimes it’s not. Here are some annoying things I have encountered waiting tables in Los …”
    Character count is 154. (If you want the full snippet to appear, set WordPress SEO to remove the post date.)

    There is only one meta description in your page source (correct format <meta name=”description” content=” etc ) and generated by WordPress SEO – so no problem with a duplicate description issue. So no need to modify your theme files. Yoast’s plugin is successfully removing the theme meta description. You only need to do so when the plugin cannot do this for you.

    Google does not always use the meta description you set. According to Google the snippet displayed depends to some extent on the search term used, so if Google feels pulling something from content is more in line with the search term that’s what it may do.
    It’s annoying, but beyond our control.

    Hope this helps

    Thread Starter CyrRei88

    (@cyrrei88)

    Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it.
    It’s good to hear that there is no need to modify the theme files.

    I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong, but when I search for the site or an article google still doesn’t find.
    I used your search query “waiting tables sucks los angeles” (included location) but my site is nowhere to be seen. The first result it shows a site called “tiporgohome.com” which features my article. The second result is a link to this article. I looked past the first few result pages of google and couldn’t see it anywhere.
    I also tried logging out of my google account and search again, as well as searching from different browsers and different computers.
    Then I tried to search for “the babbling brooke” which yielded no results either.
    The only way i can find it in google is when I search with the full url, but then the snipped looks like this:

    ... sometimes it's not. Here are some annoying things I have encountered waiting tables in Los Angeles. ... Posted by Brooke on Feb 9, 2014 in Life | 8 comments ...

    Any idea why this might be happening? Maybe it has something to do with where I’m located? It’s not just that specific article, I can’t find any of them on google (or bing for that matter)

    Also shouldn’t searching for “the babbling brooke” show the site somewhere on the first page of the search results, since the keywords are in the url? Does the ranking have to do anything with the age of the site and the traffic it gets?

    Let’s look at the age of the site (it looks very new – your sitemap page earliest date is early February this year)
    AGE is a fairly significant SERP factor (especially for new sites)
    The other thing that makes a big difference is the total number of pages (count pages and posts together).

    I advise my clients not to expect decent SERP until they’ve built content to at least 50 to 100 pages… The number is pages is not a hard and fast rule, what is is the fact bigger sites do better assuming content is good.
    I also tell clients to be patient for at least the first 6 months even if they are building content regularly.

    That’s not to mean a good article about a very unique subject won’t get good SERP, it can – even first place, if there’s no competition.

    Another thing influences Google – if you are logged into a Google account – Gmail or Plus1 for example – the search results can be very different.

    Local search also gives different results; google.ca will usually give different results to google.com – check the URL in the results page.

    The browser tracking cookie set by Google also influences results (clear the browser cache)

    I’d not worry too much at this stage about where your pages are coming up…

    Rather concentrate on building great content, only use the 300 word minimum as a MINIMUM. Sites with plenty of well written meaty articles (by meaty I mean 1000 to 2000 words) do a lot better.

    Also you want to encourage people to link to your content – forget about trackbacks – they’re a waste of time. Authors prefer to link to strong authoritative articles –

    Get a Google Webmaster Tools account. You can use the tools to see how Google pulls your meta data normally. And a bunch of other stuff – including how long it takes Google to load pages on average – the faster the better – the goal is WELL UNDER 2.5 seconds. (at this stage your site should average well under 500ms for Google page load if hosted on a decent server in USA – if CACHED… W3TC works great.

    Thread Starter CyrRei88

    (@cyrrei88)

    It seems that all the technical aspects on the site are configured properly, so I will give it some time and keep creating content and hopefully the rankings will improve over time.

    Thanks again for this really great advice.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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