# Google displaying topic list instead of meta description
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/google-displaying-topic-list-instead-of-meta-description/185904
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [April 7, 2021, 3:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/google-displaying-topic-list-instead-of-meta-description/185904 "2021-04-07T15:25:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ElForoViajero](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ElForoViajero)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2021, 3:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/google-displaying-topic-list-instead-of-meta-description/185904/1 "2021-04-07T15:25:43Z")
Hi there!
Does anyone know why on Google the meta description of the site appears as this?
Instead of the description there are some random topics and data (my site is [El Foro Viajero)](https://www.elforoviajero.com)
On desktop, the meta description appears ok.
Anyone having this issue?
Thanks!
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### Author:  [@ElForoViajero](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ElForoViajero)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2021, 9:30am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/google-displaying-topic-list-instead-of-meta-description/185904/2 "2021-06-09T09:30:57Z")
Hi again.
Is this a normal behaviour? I can’t change that at all…now in desktop search my forum doesn’t show the correct description either…
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### Author:  [@thegurjyot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/thegurjyot)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2021, 10:41am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/google-displaying-topic-list-instead-of-meta-description/185904/3 "2021-06-09T10:41:22Z")
It’s the same for my case too. I hope Discourse fix this soon.
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### Author:  [@ElForoViajero](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ElForoViajero)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2021, 12:10pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/google-displaying-topic-list-instead-of-meta-description/185904/4 "2021-06-09T12:10:03Z")
Yep..I tried a few times to let someone know. Hope this is fixed somehow
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### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2021, 12:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/google-displaying-topic-list-instead-of-meta-description/185904/5 "2021-06-09T12:16:47Z")
This is something which google is choosing to do - we don’t have any real control over it. I believe google is taking our HTML (which follows the [ItemList](https://schema.org/ItemList) schema), parsing the topic list, and then rendering the list directly in the search results.
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### Author:  [@ElForoViajero](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ElForoViajero)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2021, 12:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/google-displaying-topic-list-instead-of-meta-description/185904/6 "2021-06-09T12:28:18Z")
Thanks for your reply @david I know other forums based in discourse like [www.forobits.com](http://www.forobits.com) that don’t have this issue:
Maybe there’s a way to “force” Google to understand the meta description? My commynity looks kind of weird in the search results in comparation wiht the competitors.
I also did some digging in SEO here [SEO issue with Google results](https://meta.discourse.org/t/seo-issue-with-google-results/158490) in case you find something useful.
Thanks a lot!
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### Author:  [@david](https://meta.discourse.org/u/david)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2021, 12:30pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/google-displaying-topic-list-instead-of-meta-description/185904/7 "2021-06-09T12:30:36Z")
> [@ElForoViajero](#):
>
> I know other forums based in discourse like [www.forobits.com](http://www.forobits.com) that don’t have this issue:
Google decides what to show based on some internal logic. For example, if I search for `forobits latest`, I see the topic list view:
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### Author:  [@ElForoViajero](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ElForoViajero)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2021, 12:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/google-displaying-topic-list-instead-of-meta-description/185904/8 "2021-06-09T12:53:41Z")
that would be really understandable from google when adding (latest) but not so much when searching only for “forobits”. Another example is when you look for a newspaper you get a metadescription and the news, not a list of news. Do you think this can’t be fixed at all and our communities will not show any metadescription? Maybe there’s a way.
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### Author:  [@cocococosti](https://meta.discourse.org/u/cocococosti)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2021, 7:37pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/google-displaying-topic-list-instead-of-meta-description/185904/9 "2021-06-11T19:37:14Z")
According to [this article](https://www.perrill.com/google-change-title-description-search-results/):
> The title tag and meta description are merely suggestions for what the search engines should display in the results. Google and Bing and other search engines are under no obligation to display exactly what you want them to display.
So it’s really up to the search engine. In Bing it looks like this:
You could try changing the meta description to use different words. Maybe Google doesn’t like that you use “El mejor foro de viajes” when there is another site that says “El mayor foro de viajes”. I’m just guessing here though, I’m no SEO expert 😕
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### Author:  [@ElForoViajero](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ElForoViajero)
#### Post date: [June 21, 2021, 2:55pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/google-displaying-topic-list-instead-of-meta-description/185904/10 "2021-06-21T14:55:25Z")
Thanks a lot for your feedback on this, I’ll try to change that description indeed. It looks much better on Bing than on Google. thanks!