It's the Snippet Stupid

When you search at Google or Yahoo or Bing, you’ll see a set of search results that include a page title, a summary or snippet of the page, and a URL indicating the address of the page.

Often, that combination of title, snippet, and URL will be the deciding factor as to whether or not someone clicks through search results to a page.

The snippet peforms a couple of functions – it gives you a summary of what the page is about, and it shows you the context within which your query terms might appear on a page.

Sometimes a search engine will show you the Meta Description that the publisher of the page has come up with for a page, especially if the Meta Description contains the words found in the query.

Sometimes a search engine will show you a description that isn’t even found on the page, if it decides that the page is relevant for a query but the description for the page at the Yahoo Directory or DMOZ makes a better snippet than the meta description or any of the content found on the page.

It’s also quite possible, and very common for a search engine to use content found on a page to show as a snippet for that page. Chances are that search engines show text from a page’s content as a snippet for most queries more often than they do the meta description for a page, or a description from an alternative source such as the Yahoo or DMOZ directories.

If a snippet shown to a searcher isn’t very informative, searchers may click on pages in search results that don’t contain the information they are looking for, or they may not click on pages that may be helpful. Poorly chosen snippets can lead to bad searching experiences.

Provided by fellow Twitterer SEO by the SEA