Matching, bolded keywords drive click-throughs, and people rarely read the whole text of a snippet. Google's attempts to match snippets to queries don't always work the way you'd like, but in general they're a good thing. Typically, these issues would be better dealt with in your on-page content directly. In general, I'd only use this option if Google is taking liberties with snippets that could harm your brand or cause legal problems. This directive will remove your snippet ENTIRELY, though, so use it with caution. There's another, much more severe META tag you can use to block your snippet entirely:
This problem isn't quite as common as it used to be, but it does still pop up from time to time. If you suspect that your search snippet is coming from the Open Directory Project (this would be more common on the home-page than deeper pages and long-tail queries), you can block Google from using your ODP listing with the following META tag: De-duplicating your TITLEs and META descriptions is a good practice anyway, but making sure that each page has its own unique and relevant description can also help insure that Google sees value in those descriptions. In some cases, having too many pages with duplicate TITLE tags or META descriptions can lead Google to rank the wrong page or filter that META description. It's also just a good exercise – figuring out what your core target keywords are and targeting them naturally in your META description (don't just make it a list of keywords, of course) will help you focus your overall on-page SEO efforts. If Google can find the matching copy in your description, they're more likely to use the tag as is. One solution is to make sure that phrase appears in our META description for the relevant page. Let's say that, for some reason, we really wanted that SEOmoz blog post to rank for "January 19". Like so much of SEO, though, there are some ways to nudge Google in the right direction: 1. Turning off the Show home button toggle removes the Home button from your address bar (though the Home button on your keyboard will still work). Under the Appearance section, you can see a couple of options under the Show home button header. So, is there anything you can do to bend Google to your will and always use your META descriptions? Unfortunately, the short answer is "no". Click the three-dot button in the upper-right corner, and then click the Settings option. Since that copy is really just dates and fragments, I end up with a strange mash-up of on-page copy. In the example above, Google is using my query ("January 11") and pulling up page content that the algorithm thinks is relevant. Typically, search snippets come from 1 of 3 places (and we’re just talking basic snippets here, not rich snippets like sitelinks): So, where do snippets come from, and is there anything you can do to stay in control? Search Snippet Basics Site owners are understandably frustrated when they see the META descriptions they've labored over get carelessly tossed aside. You may have seen a schizophrenic search result that looked something like this:
While this works well, if the feature isn’t optimized properly, or if your GPU is overworked, graphical errors (like a Chrome black screen) can occur. In particular, your computer can use its graphics card or integrated graphics chipset to reduce the demand on your CPU. Hardware acceleration is a feature in certain applications that use the processing power of your computer components (such as your CPU or graphics card) to speed up certain actions, prioritizing those actions above other running system processes. If you continue to see a Chrome black screen, you’ll need to look into a more detailed fix using the steps below. You can also close and restart Chrome to achieve the same effect, as restarting your browser will regenerate the interface and clear any black screen errors.