JeffClevelandTN
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Was on the fence about posting this as a Question or Discussion so I flipped a coin
.
Has anybody else noticed lately that Google is rarely utilizing user provided Meta Descriptions? Our company provides Digital Marketing Services, including SEO and copywriting. We've been publishing a lot of new content for the past couple weeks on over a dozen websites for one of our larger clients. This is a mixture of new web pages and refreshing/updating content on existing web pages. We utilize Yoast for managing Titles and Meta Descriptions. After publishing/updating we typically will request the page to be crawled by Google via Search Console.
Anecdotally, I'd say in the past, it would be almost 100% that Google would choose the custom provided Meta Description when it was a new page and about 50% of the time (maybe less) it would choose the custom provided Meta Description when updating an existing ranked page. However, lately it seems that Google simply chooses to create its own Meta Description regardless of it being a new page or existing page. Titles still seem to be effective for new pages and hit or miss with existing pages. I've gone back to look at some of our other client websites (besides the one mentioned above) that we've recently written content and furnished custom Titles and Meta Descriptions and it seems to be a similar situation.
I've told my clients for years that it is Google's prerogative on whether it uses its own Meta Description or a user provided one, but lately it appears that Google is totally ignoring user provide Meta Descriptions.
Would appreciate feedback from other people on their recent experience in this area and any possible suggestions.
Thanks!
Jeff
Has anybody else noticed lately that Google is rarely utilizing user provided Meta Descriptions? Our company provides Digital Marketing Services, including SEO and copywriting. We've been publishing a lot of new content for the past couple weeks on over a dozen websites for one of our larger clients. This is a mixture of new web pages and refreshing/updating content on existing web pages. We utilize Yoast for managing Titles and Meta Descriptions. After publishing/updating we typically will request the page to be crawled by Google via Search Console.
Anecdotally, I'd say in the past, it would be almost 100% that Google would choose the custom provided Meta Description when it was a new page and about 50% of the time (maybe less) it would choose the custom provided Meta Description when updating an existing ranked page. However, lately it seems that Google simply chooses to create its own Meta Description regardless of it being a new page or existing page. Titles still seem to be effective for new pages and hit or miss with existing pages. I've gone back to look at some of our other client websites (besides the one mentioned above) that we've recently written content and furnished custom Titles and Meta Descriptions and it seems to be a similar situation.
I've told my clients for years that it is Google's prerogative on whether it uses its own Meta Description or a user provided one, but lately it appears that Google is totally ignoring user provide Meta Descriptions.
Would appreciate feedback from other people on their recent experience in this area and any possible suggestions.
Thanks!
Jeff
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