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I have a page (not well ranked though) that if I search for using the name, so let's say my page is www.example-example.com, when I search for example-example, the title is correct, but in description it shows me alt text of an image (logo), which happens to contain "example-example logo".

The meta description is set in HTML.

Any suggestions on how this can be fixed?

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    I'm not sure I understand what the problem is. Google often chooses to use a snippet from the page rather than the meta description. It depends on what the user searched for. It depends on whether the meta description contains those keywords. – Stephen Ostermiller♦ May 8 '17 at 9:14
  • I see, well, seems fair enough, although I don't understand why would Google choose to use alt text of my logo to begin with? Does that mean if I used the keyword example-example (just sticking to my example in question) in my meta description, it will be more likely that the description will be used? – pzaj May 8 '17 at 9:22
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    Yes. If the search is in the meta description, Google is much more likely to use it for that query. – Stephen Ostermiller♦ May 8 '17 at 10:31
  • does your problem solved? I have completely same problem @user1970395 – neda Derakhshesh Aug 6 '18 at 11:33
  • I had the exact same issue. Google was showing the image alt. tag for the title when searched for brand name and even when using the site search (site:example.com). Google was using the image alt tag because the brand name wasn't mentioned in the title. Thank you for your post. The discussions here helped me find the problem. – Azimur Rahman yesterday
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As written in question comment, Google algorithm mostly generates what's best for the user, meaning you can't control every time how it appears.

Having said that, once you optimise the page for certain keywords you would like to rank for and then write meta title and description based on that then it may show what you may have in meta title and description for related searches.

Regarding displaying image alt tag etc. I would say it may be due to very limited quality content which Google can pick to show. So, just have good quality content in good length and it should fix it.

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  • Thank you for your answer, it will definitely help. I already knew what you said in first two paragraphs, but the last one is quite new to me, I would rather think it will use the meta description if no quality content was found! – pzaj May 8 '17 at 10:52

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