how to control the Description section of my web site inside search engine (Google,Bing & Yahoo)

Question

I have published my web site which is based on asp.net mvc-5 web template to the web (4 month ago). and the problem I am facing is that my web site behave differently inside the search engine results . for example when I search for my web site url I get these outcomes inside different search engines:-

1- Inside Google I will get one search result link , which have the title & URL of the home page while the search result description will be equal to this mark-up which is part of the contact page (but will not show the Telephone and fax):-

 <h2>Addresses</h2>
     <address>
        <div class="info">
              <p><span class="footercolor">Telephone: </span><span>+***/**</span></p>
              <p><span class="footercolor">FAX: </span><span class="marginfax">+111 1 ***/**</span></p>
              <p class="mainaddress">3rd Floor, Bldg. 5(*****),<br />**** Str. ****.</p>
              <p><span class="footercolor">P</span>.<span class="footercolor">O</span>.<span class="footercolor">Box: </span><span>****,*****</span></p>
              <p><span class="footercolor">Email:</span><span> <a href="mailto:info@****.com " target="_top">info@***.com</a></span></p>
        </div>
     </address>

2-inside Bing I will get 2 search results ; one for the home page while the other for the contact page. For the home page search result the description section will be equal to the following mark-up which is the first paragraph of my home page (if we exclude the upper menu):-

<div>
                        <p class="title1" style="color:#78a22f">Project A</p>
                        <p class="title2">Set within B.......,<br> a...... </p>
                        <div class="links1">
                            <a href="@Url.Action("OurProjects","Home")" class="btn btn1">Read More</a><a href="@Url.Action("Contact","Home")" class="btn btn2">Contact Us</a>
                        </div>
                    </div>

while the second search result link will have the contact page tile & URL with the same description as in Google but will be showing the telephone and fax.

• finally inside yahoo I will get one search result link. which have the title and url of the contact web page and the same description as in Google and the second link in bing.

now I got confused on what is going on, so can anyone advice on these points:-

• Previously I know that the Web Site Description section inside the search result will be extracted by the search engine using the meta descriptions , but this is being ignored in the last few years here is a link link which talk about this. so how I can control the search result Description section that is shown inside the search result?

• My web site's home page contain a list of our latest projects, while I want the web site description section to be equal to the About us page's first paragraph (which gives a high level overview about our company). so can I get the search result as follow:-

  • Show the Home page URL & Tile
  • Show the about us page's first paragraph as the description ?

• why search engines mainly (Bing & Yahoo) are so aggressive to show the Contact page URL and title, even yahoo only show it ?

• why search engine are so aggressive in showing the Address mark-up as the description section, is this due to using the <address> tag ?

Thanks

Answer 1

There is no way to have 100% control over how your site looks in search results. Search engines have complicated algorithms that choose the snippet that shows up in search results. The same page may show different snippets for different queries.

Here are some tips:

1. Provide a meta-description. Search engines usually prefer the meta description over text on the page if the feel it is appropriate for the query.
2. Use the keywords users are likely to be searching for in the meta description. Search engines don't usually use anything as the snippet if it doesn't contain at least some of the keywords in the query.
3. Limit your meta description to 180 characters. If it fits in the snippet it is more likely to be chosen.
4. Use full sentences on the page that you wouldn't mind having as the snippet. Start them with a capital letter and end with a period. Use them near the top of the page. Sentences near the top of the page are more likely to be chosen than other text further down. This provides alternates for when the meta description can't be chosen. Use different keywords in these sentences.