Why Would Business Introduction Not Appear in Search Results?

[elwalker]

I have a listing with a well written introduction. Not too long just three short sentences with some relevant keywords and location information. Admittedly there are a few paragraph breaks and a link to the website in the intro.

However when I search for keyword + location none of this introduction appears in the search results. Whereas it does for other nearby businesses.

Does anyone know why this could be?

Does the introduction need to be just a succinct one liner which fits in the available space? Is Google rewarding businesses who successfully create a one line "elevator pitch"? Is there a new advised word or character length?

Or is Google pulling this information from somewhere else? Site schema?

Any advice and thoughts on this area would be appreciated.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Welcome to the forum! This could honestly be for dozens of reasons. Could you post the name of your business, phone number & address?

 

[elwalker]

Thanks Joy. I'll PM you the information.

 

[JoyHawkins]

It's no problem to post your info on here so others can chime in and help We talked about this privately but I'll post what I shared with you.

Business Info
Burgers & Fish

01841 532884

1A The Strand, Padstow, Cornwall, PL28 8AJ

Padstow Restaurant | Burgers & Fish - Trendy Gourmet Restaurant

My Advice
I'll be honest - I'm not the best at troubleshooting businesses in the UK because the directories and data providers Google uses for you are different than over here in North America. I'll ping one of the TCs over in the UK to chime in.

It looks like some of your issues might be related to technical aspects of the website. If you look at the text-version Google has for your site, they are unable to read any of the content you put on the homepage:

Padstow Restaurant | Burgers & Fish - Trendy Gourmet Restaurant

 

[elwalker]

Thanks for all this advice. We thought we had solved the website text issue by manipulating the Squarespace template. Despite our best efforts this text remains hidden to Google. The Squarespace template is locked down and does not allow the addition of text or html content blocks. My client has been very reluctant to move away from the template.

Now, thanks to Joy's help, I have some hard information to go back to them and plead with them to allow me to move the site to more manageable CMS.

Thanks for your help so far.

But back to the original question, do you think introduction in the Google My Business listing will appear once Google is able to cross check against some text on the website?

 

[timcapper]

It looks like you have the content in a script or image block.

I don't know what squarespace offers, but you want your content to be in a text, html or raw html block.

Then once content transferred you can check this in your Google search console:

Crawl >> Fetch as Google

Fetch and Render

Click on the display link and see if Googlebot is now seeing your content

If you want me to double check just shout

 

[James Watt]

Hi Elwalker,

Man, more cool troubleshooting stuff from Joy and Tim, I'll have to add that cached page check to my list, definitely looks like you've got a problem there.

After reading your question though, I think you might be asking about something entirely different, so I figured I'd chime in.

Are you asking about your business description you wrote on your Google My Business profile?


And are you asking why it's not showing in your knowledge graph?


I hope Joy or Tim or one of the other pros corrects me on this if I'm wrong, but to my knowledge at least, the business description you type in on your Google My Business profile literally doesn't display anywhere anymore. It's still important to fill out, and to my knowledge at least, what you write there can help Google make a judgement about what to say about your business, but that description you wrote isn't showing because it's not showing for anyone else either, and hasn't been since late 2015.

You will sometimes see businesses with an editorial description though. Those are generated algorithmically, and are challenging to influence.
https://support.google.com/business/answer/6088158

If I'm right and you're asking about your business description, then no worries... everything's as it should be, it's safe to move your focus to other areas of your local SEO efforts.

 

[djbaxter]

It looks like you have the content in a script or image block.

I don't know what squarespace offers, but you want your content to be in a text, html or raw html block.

Then once content transferred you can check this in your Google search console:

Crawl >> Fetch as Google

Fetch and Render

Click on the display link and see if Googlebot is now seeing your content

If you want me to double check just shout

Tim, as you saw there was something, maybe a missing closing tag or added parameter in the image or something similar, that not only cut off your posts but broke the page rendering in some way so that subsequent posts weren't displayed.

Unfortunately, it also meant none of the administrator editing options were visible. The only way I could get the page to display properly was to physically delete those two posts.

Sorry about that. If you can recall what you said, try re-posting it without any images or tags.

 

[elwalker]

Thanks for everyone who helped with this advice on this issue. It is very much appreciated. Sorry for not coming back sooner, I forgot to check in again to respond.

UPDATE: Because of the issues the site was causing I totally re-created the site in Wordpress to help solve problems and facilitate better optimisation.

However, I still haven't got to the root of the issue as to why the short business intro does not appear in Maps listings. Thanks James Watt for the screenshots. However where the description is missing (while it is shown for other companies) is in the Maps search listings.

Please see this screenshot:



It's not critical, I guess, but those keywords must count for something and it helps the potential customer make their choice.

Does anyone know where these short intros are fed from? How to add them?

 

[JoyHawkins]

They are called editorial summaries and Google writes them. If you don't have one there is unfortunately no way to request one. https://support.google.com/business/answer/6088158?hl=en

 

[elwalker]

Thanks for the information.