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I want to make search engines display only the title of my web page on their search results.
And I don't want to show any descriptions and any texts of my page on the search results.

For example, this site is displayed like:

Stack Overflow
A language-independent collaboratively edited question and answer site for programmers.
stackoverflow.com/ - Cached - Similar


In this case, I don't want to make search engines display the text A language-independent collaboratively edited question and answer site for programmers..
And I want to make them display like:

Stack Overflow
stackoverflow.com/ - Cached - Similar


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I don't think you really have any control over that. Also, does this belong on Webmasters? – minitech May 20 '11 at 2:32
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migrated from stackoverflow.com May 20 '11 at 11:29

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2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

<meta name="robots" content="nosnippet" /> tells search engines to not include a snippet in search results.

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thanks for your information! does content="nosnippet" prevent displaying not only meta description but also texts inside body tag? do you know a example page which uses content="nosnippet"? – js_ May 20 '11 at 7:14
@js_ Yes. That tag prevents display of the snippet in results. The source(meta, body text) of what the snippet would be doesn't matter, since there is no snippet to show anyway. – Su' May 20 '11 at 11:48
thanks for your comment. <meta name="robots" content="nosnippet" /> works for every search engines(google, bing, yahoo)? – js_ May 21 '11 at 14:09
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up vote -1 down vote

Create a page with just a title and no content. 

<html><head><title>Google Content</title></head><body></body></html>

Seriously, I don't think you can control this. Unless all your content is AJAX-ed in, but then your content won't show up in searches since Google isn't AJAX friendly.

EDIT: You can also try to use the META tags to control this: 

<meta name="description" content=""/>
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thanks for your answer. do you know that <meta name="description" content=""/> works or not? or do you know a example page which uses a empty meta description tag? i dont have my web site yet but i will have it and try this in a week. – js_ May 20 '11 at 7:06
I though Google could handle AJAX content. – FreeAsInBeer May 20 '11 at 11:38
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This makes no sense. The point is to prevent engines from displaying snippets, not to create a bunch of empty pages. Setting a blank meta description won't do anything, either. Those are just a suggestion and regularly ignored; if unavailable, they might even go outside your site altogether to DMOZ, for example. See second paragraph – Su' May 20 '11 at 11:52
@Su - I don't think you caught the spirit of my answer... Obviously an empty page is a stupid idea and there was the keyword "try" in my meta tag suggestion (my only real suggestion). But you're completely right that they may ignore whatever they please and nothing is guaranteed. – Brandon Boone May 20 '11 at 12:11
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