Why Doesn't Google Display my Meta Descriptions?

Google does not have to use your Meta Description and never has. It’s just a suggestion and Google can use whatever they want to as the description in search results. You cannot force them to use your Meta Description.

Yes, I know Google doesn’t have to use my meta descriptions. However when I used All in One SEO Pack to assign meta descriptions on an earlier site, Google picked them up.

On my latest site, none of my meta descrips are used. I’m wondering what could possibly be the difference. What would make Google use the meta descrips for the earlier site, yet none for this one?

I’m thinking that perhaps there’s some setting within All in One SEO Pack that I’ve applied wrong this time. Any clue?

It could be that Google just has not updated their index for that site yet. Have you checked whether they’ve updated their index?

Actually google should have updated their index for my site long ago. I assigned the meta descrips and initiated a crawl through google webmaster tools long ago.

Maybe I’ll give it another go. It’s just so strange that google is behaving differently for two sites that I both manage.

Have you tried doing a site search in Google as this is the only way to see exactly what they have in their index?

I’m having this same problem. The pages for my website all have two meta descriptions and two keywords tags being generated. Yesterday when I first noticed this and viewed my source code, I saw that the meta description which was the first 160 characters of the page text was showing up first. I updated AIOSEO and now that shows up second below the meta desc that I have written out in the AIOSEO plugin settings.

view-source:https://outcareyourcompetition.com/

I’ve gone through my header.php and pagetemplate.php and I see nothing that would generate this second meta desc and keyword tag. Very frustrating because for blog posts it’s fine as the meta tags I enter are being displayed properly and not being auto generated. Also, like you in ways, I have other clients websites that use AIOSEO and their pages don’t have two meta tags.

I thought it had something to do with an update as my clients are running older versions from 2.1 and I just updated my site to 2.2.4.2 yesterday and had the latest update running before that. But that wasn’t it as it just swapped my meta tags around again to have the auto generated one show first.

I just figured out what it was. My website developer thought maybe it was to do with another plugin I just downloaded conflicting with AIOSEO and it was. I added “Geodirectory” plugin a few weeks back. Once I disabled, it, that second meta desc was gone! So it’s probably something to do with a plugin.

Hi Jordan,

Given that you have already found the conflicting plugin I assume you are ok. If this is a problem with the Geodirectory plugin then you may want to contact the developer of that plugin.

I also have a similar problem. My website is pallareviews.com. I’m using Thesis and Yoast WordPress SEO plugins for SEO. I’m entering the meta-description in Yoast’s box and leaving the default Thesis meta description for my post empty. Is that a problem? Please suggest.

Hi shreen,

I am sorry, you posted in the wrong forums. This is support for All in One SEO Pack. If you want support for Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin you have to post in that forum.