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Problem with description of my site and google search
Does Google use the Meta Description Tag for Description of Page?

When we search for our site on Google. What do I need to do to change the description?

When I inspect the <head> element, I see something like:

<meta name="description" content="foobar blah blah blah blah">

I see the title, though (which displays correctly). But the description is some random content that can be found on the homepage. It's not the actual description specified in the meta tag.

I hear that it takes up to a month until Google updates the description for a site. Is this true?

Unfortunately, I am unable to post the URL of our site here. Company policy, since we are still in private beta. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

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marked as duplicate by paulmorriss, Su', danlefree♦ Oct 14 '11 at 9:28

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

1 Answer

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You're looking in the correct place for what should show up as your site's description in Google. Remember to populate your description with your core competencies. It's also a plus if these align with some of your keyword targets. Only the first 160 characters (including spaces) will show up in Google before you get the "..."

The time it takes to show up in Google is variable and depends largely upon your site's existing popularity. If you've got any kind of log analyzing capability for your server logs, you can monitor how often your site is crawled by bots and get a better estimate of how soon your listing will get updated.

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