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I updated the meta description for a site that I made for a friend of mine a few weeks ago and a Google search is just now reflecting my changes. However, there is a slightly greyed-out prefix to the description that says "63 schools-" and I cannot find any information about how to influence this section of the description. The text "63 schools" does appear in my page twice within p tags so I know where it comes from.

It appears that usually it is a date on websites that have dated posts, but my site's content doesn't merit that clarification and I would like it to be removed entirely.

I would appreciate and insight on how to direct Google to remove this, or at least change it to something that has meaning in the context of my description.

Image for clarification:

enter image description here

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    Did you by chance use anything related to "63 schools" in your Google search? As can be seen here, Google sometimes uses <meta> tag content to generate snippets, if we think they give users a more accurate description than can be taken directly from the page content. It can compose the snippet based on your search request and the indexed content, so not necessarily your meta description tag alone. Try altering your search, and if it's still appearing, you could either remove that text from your content, or place it in an image.
    – dan ♦
    Commented Jul 27, 2018 at 7:15
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    @dan I didn't include that particular snippet in my search. It also appears when I search for the site using some other keywords like climb7 or Matt Moniz. I am probably just going to remove that particular text from the site for now but it seems kind of odd that Google would choose that totally random snippet to include.
    – FastestBurrito
    Commented Jul 28, 2018 at 17:15

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Google not only displays dates like this, but it can also display number of items.

I work on an eCommerce site and for our category pages it displays a grey prefix in the serps such as 359 items.

This is only included as text at the top of the category pages, it isn't in the page titles or meta descriptions, it doesn't have any special formatting and isn't included in schema. So Google must look for an indication of the number of items listed on a page, and can show it as a special prefix.

I think in your case, Google is just mistaking the number 63 in your content, for the number of items on the page.

There is no special way to get this from stop displaying like that in the serps, so yes, I suggest experiment with editing the text to see if it gets removed. (maybe remove the two instances of it in the content, or change the wording slighty)

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    I just changed the numbers to text (63 -> sixty-three). I'll check back to confirm if this eliminates the prefix.
    – FastestBurrito
    Commented Aug 2, 2018 at 18:34

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