Do you know how Google chooses the snippets of text that appear on their search engine results pages (SERPs) between the hyperlink and URL for each organic listing? At first there might seem to be no rhyme or reason in how they select the search result snippet, but Google is very deliberate in their selection. Knowing how this block of text is chosen is very important to any webmaster or search engine optimization (SEO) professional.
Variations of Google snippets
Snippet
Google has always put a lot of thought into how they present organic listings on a search engine results page. In fact, they are constantly testing subtle changes to how they present such listings. The hyperlink and URL displayed as part of each search result have seen very few changes over the years. But variations of Google search snippets are frequently being tested.
There are many specialized snippet formats used in the SERPs for very specific types of organic search listings such as those for books, news, and reviews. But these make up only a small percentage of the overall total. Most are what I would call “typical” search snippets and are the focus of the remainder of this document.
The typical search result snippet
The main purpose of displaying a search snippet is to convey to the user what they can expect to find should they click on a particular link in the SERPs. Google also has an additional goal in mind when selecting a snippet. They would like to be able to highlight or bold all keywords from the search phrase within this block of text. This is the most important factor in how Google chooses snippets.
At Google, this block of text is typically displayed with a maximum of about 150 characters. They recently announced that they have begun displaying even longer search results snippets when the user searches for long tail keywords phrases containing more than 3 keywords.
Sources of Google snippets
As I mentioned previously, it is very important to understand how Google selects this descriptive block of text to display in their search results. Knowing how they select them and from where the text comes will allow you to control to a certain extent what is displayed in the SERPs.
The typical snippet displayed in Google’s organic search results come from three sources:
the meta description element in the page’s HTML
constructed by Google from sentence fragments from the page
the page description from the Open Directory Project
In reality, the first two are actually used 99.999+% of the time. The ODP is rarely used and only as a last resort.
Using the meta description element
Once Google decides on which URLs to show in the SERPs for a particular search query, they build each listing on the fly. When determining what to show as the snippet for a given URL, the first thing they do is to interrogate the meta description element for that page. They look to see if all keywords in the search phrase appear in the page’s meta description. If they do and the meta description is not extremely short then Google will display the meta description as their search snippet. Knowing this is powerful from a SEO perspective.
Though the meta description is not used by Google for ranking a web page, it is still very important to optimize this element because it can affect click-through-rates when it is displayed in the SERPs as the Google snippet. It should be optimized with the following goals in mind:
Increase the number of times the meta description is chosen for the search snippet.
Include a call to action so that users will be compelled to click on your link.
Accurately describe the web page being referenced.
Typically a well optimized web page will have the targeted keyword phrase(s) in the title element of the page. The targeted phrase(s) from the page title element should be the search phrase(s) most often used to locate the web page in the SERPs. For this reason the meta description should contain every keyword from the title element if possible. This will maximize the number of times it is used for Google’s search snippet.
Constructing a search result snippet
If all keywords from the user’s search phrase are not found in the meta description element or if the meta description is considered too short then Google will typically build its own snippet. There is likely a very complex algorithm that has been developed for building this little block of text. The important thing to note is that while they are typically good at building snippets for organic search results, click-through-rates on constructed Google snippets are typically lower than those instances where a well optimized meta description is shown instead.
Google constructs snippets by choosing sentence fragments from the page that contain individual keywords from the search phrase and concatenating them together to create this block of text. You can tell when this has happened because the snippet of text will contain several ellipses (…). As I mentioned earlier, Google will select fragments with the goal being to highlight or bold all keywords from the search phrase.
Using Open Directory Project descriptions
The Open Directory Project (also known as ODP or more commonly as DMOZ) is a highly trusted web directory. It is very hard to get one or more URLs from a web site listed in DMOZ. The acceptance process involves a manual review by an editor and can take months or years to get included. If a URL is accepted by DMOZ then an editor writes a handcrafted description of what the user can expect to find at your URL.
When Google cannot find all of the keywords from the search phrase in your web page’s meta description element and they cannot construct a snippet that contains all of the keywords because they do not all appear in the content of the page, they will look at DMOZ to see if that URL is listed there. If it is then Google will display the DMOZ description of that URL as a last resort.
Why optimizing the meta description is important
Now that you know how Google selects their search snippets, it should be obvious why optimizing the meta description should be viewed as a very important part of your on-page search engine optimization process. Although doing so will not directly improve a URL’s search engine rankings, it can lead to its meta description being shown more often which can lead to higher click-through-rates and more traffic.
Google Snippets – How Does Google Choose the Typical Search Result Snippet?
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