Meta description not displaying sometimes

  • Resolved hbk747

    (@hbk747)


    3 years, 10 months ago

    Hello, hope the Yoast team is well.

    I googled my website and some of its articles and papers and I see that sometimes the meta description that we write for said articles and papers gets displayed but other times it displays the WordPress excerpt that we also add. Other times it is a weird amalgam of text, the copyright symbol, and the year (this is true for the homepage even though the homepage has a meta description as well).
    I am very confused as to why this is happening. Basically, I just want the meta description that we are writing for our posts and pages to be shown when someone googles us or our content. Can someone please help. Yes I use the latest version of WordPress and Yoast. At first, I thought this is a Google issue since my website is only 5 months old but I am not sure anymore.

    For your reference, here are a few examples. If you google “Paradigm Shift CPEC a game changer for Pakistan”, you should see our post. The excerpt below the post title on google for that article is not the meta description that I set (it is in fact the title of the piece and then the WordPress excerpt). Second example: If you google “Iran’s nuclear prowess paradigm shift”, the text below is basically the first h2 heading in the post and then the first paragraph (not the meta description I set or even the WordPress excerpt). You can do the same for other pieces of content as well. As I said, even the homepage does not show the meta description which is very worrying.

    Some of the articles/papers’ meta descriptions do display properly so idk what the issue is.

    Hope you can help.

    Thank you

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Support Md Mazedul Islam Khan

    (@mazedulislamkhan)

    The issue you are experiencing here with the meta description is very common. Google often modifies the meta description based on the search terms. In fact, Google not only modifies the meta description but also modifies the SEO title as well. Unfortunately, no one has any control over this. You can find more information about this here.

    That said, we looked at your site and can confirm that Yoast SEO is generating the description meta correctly as expected. So, it’s up to Google now to decide what to show in the search results.

    Plugin Support devnihil

    (@devnihil)

    @hbk747 I checked on the page https://www.paradigmshift.com.pk/pakistan-cpec/ and confirmed that Yoast is outputting the following for the title and meta description (see images here and here):

    <title>CPEC: A Game Changer for Pakistan’s Energy Sector | Paradigm Shift</title>
    <meta name=”description” content=”The CPEC could finally resolve Pakistan's energy sector crisis by initiating a plethora of energy projects (from oil to wind) all across the country.” />

    However, we do see that this is not the meta description that Google is displaying in a search here.
    ?
    Whereas Google typically uses the title and meta description from the page’s metadata for indexing, this is not always the case. Google will sometimes modify or ignore the title and meta description when it sees fit, as well as sometimes adding the brand or site name.

    This is not due to the plugin not functioning correctly though. But rather, it is due to Google using another value for the title and meta description as it’s algorithm has concluded that there is a better version to index.

    We have additional information on this topic available at the following link: https://yoast.com/help/my-seo-title-isnt-displayed-as-i-have-entered-it/
    ?
    ?If Google is ignoring the title or meta description you have created for a page and creating it’s own based off the page’s content, we would recommend creating new ones that try to better reflect the page’s content, and how content in it can be most beneficial to a user in the search engine.

    Please refer to these articles as they include recommendations for crafting a title/description which will help increase the likelihood that Google will use the those that you specified, instead of it’s modified version. We also have an article on how to write clean and meaningful meta descriptions for your pages in this guide. https://yoast.com/meta-descriptions/.

    Thread Starter hbk747

    (@hbk747)

    Oh no! I hate google and its monopoly grrr!

    Thank you Team Yoast!

    Take care

    Regards!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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