I’m not a CSS expert/coder - Is there any easy way for me to have a better caption for Google Search results - for example the site description (or similar) from the “About Page”, for my discourse forum/News Plugin. Here (below) is what it looks like right now - when I search on google for “rapamycin news” and I would like a better top level textual description for the website before the list of posts: [f3de2014f4d268e0a5aecf5c407514fcddc79fef_2_640x213]

Backlinks isn’t that big thing. The most important thing looks to be how offered content of a site replys to personal history (search history, clicks). Meta Katiska is in top-5 search results in its niche. Backlinks are just another gateway to googlegot. But these are different things: what is ranking for a person what does googe show as meta data what is needed as meta for real user I don’t value meta description much, or at all, but quote from real content is big deal. I know, both are technically same thing, but value for people is different. But… the original question is not is something more important in the real world, but why basically same technical solution gives different endproduct. The answer is more or less because of Google AND how people act with search results.

[image] j127: If there is a way to insert a paragraph of custom text above the table in the bot view, then Google might show that instead of the table rows, Exactly - I think this is the type of simple solution that would solve the issue for everyone. What seems to be needed is an “alt” site description for the table view that google is generating.

Hey @BCHK :slight_smile: [image] Bcguy: Is it possible that ThePavillion’s News Plugin I use to make my site into a “blog” on the home page - causing problems for google? No. The news plugin will not affect the content your website serves to Google’s crawlers. [image] Bcguy: but this issue seems to be under Discourse’ control. As others have pointed out in different ways, it’s not really up to Discourse. Discourse provides a meta description tag, and yours is appearing in the head of https://www.rapamycin.news as expected. It’s up to Google to decide what to do with that. [image] Bcguy: [image] j127: If there is a way to insert a paragraph of custom text above the table in the bot view, then Google might show that instead of the table rows, Exactly - I think this is the type of simple solution that would solve the issue for everyone. What seems to be needed is an “alt” site description for the table view that google is generating. The key word here is “might”. As @j127 pointed out, the text Google displays under your search result is relative to both what is searched, and other variables that Google decides are important. Trying to reverse engineer the Google algorithm to achieve a specific kind search result display is a rabbit hole. The only way to reasonably approach this from a technical perspective is to stick to the meta tag standards, which is what Discourse does. [image] Bcguy: Is there any easy way for me to have a better caption for Google Search results - for example the site description (or similar) from the “About Page”, for my discourse forum/News Plugin. I understand that you think that it would be better to display the site description, but do you have any reason to think that showing the site description is better for SEO and user conversion than showing a list of recent topics? In short, Google’s algorithm has decided that it’s better to show the latest topic list instead of the site’s meta description. Both are there in your markup and it’s made a decision in favor of the topic list. You think this is the wrong decision. Fair enough, but Discourse has provided all the relevant data. The rest is up to Google. If you really wanted to lean into this approach, you could create a Discourse plugin which removes the structured topic list data that Discourse provides to search engines. This would make it much more likely that Google would show your site’s meta description. However, unless you had a really good reason to think this was better, I wouldn’t advise it.

Google is known to use the meta description completely at its own discretion. It’s not clear when and where they’ll use it, and for what search queries. and how you show up in SERP’s is also something that changes depending on how the algorithm is feeling. [Screen Shot 2022-05-10 at 10.15.30 PM]

[image] Angus McLeod: If you really wanted to lean into this approach, you could create a Discourse plugin which removes the structured topic list data that Discourse provides to search engines. This would make it much more likely that Google would show your site’s meta description. However, unless you had a really good reason to think this was better, I wouldn’t advise it. Are there any hacks that we could do to not show the structured topic list data / table format that I’m seeing - perhaps a robots.txt hack that would block them from showing just the table view - thus effectively forcing them to the meta description / regular view.

[image] Nader: Google is known to use the meta description completely at its own discretion. So frustrating… your site is about the same size / activity as mine - but you have the better SEO view… I think part of it might be the fact that you have discourse in a subdirectory… for me its the main site.

[image] Bcguy: but you have the better SEO view… I think part of it might be the fact that you have discourse in a subdirectory Perhaps but I have a long way to go =)

Your meta description is almost definitely too short. Try changing it to something that is 150+ characters long and that aligns with the searcher’s intent. (Google will truncate it if it goes much beyond that.) I posted some links on optimizing the meta description in my first post above. Then go to Google Search Console and put the homepage URL of your site into the “inspect URL” box at the top. You can request re-indexing there. Wait a couple of weeks and then check the search results again.

It happens the same to me at my site www.elforoviajero.com since 3 years ago. I tried changing the description a few times, reindex, write to Google, write here…and still I get this awful view when changing for my forum’s name. [Captura de pantalla 2022-05-11 a las 10.07.28]

I’m trying to underline the point we can’t manipulate Google, not easily anyway. This I showed earlier: [image] no meta-description, just three the newest topics This I got when I was using porn in cognito mode: [image] meta-description is there, but not topic-list And as somekind reference when using my phone and Google knew me: [image] So, it changes depending size of screen and if Google had guessing what I’m typically looking for. That means it is more or less waste of time to try understand what, when, where and why. If a site has sitemap meta data as it should googlebot has access there is not too much to do.

How to optimize Google Site Description / Results for News Plugin/ Discourse Site

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stance455 (Nader) May 10, 2022, 7:46pm 25

Perhaps but I have a long way to go =)

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How to optimize Google Site Description / Results for News Plugin/ Discourse Site

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