Our site has seven different language sections.  They are listed below.

http://www.study-mexico.com/english/1/
http://www.study-mexico.com/German/1/
http://www.study-mexico.com/Japanese/1/
http://www.study-mexico.com/Korean/1/
http://www.study-mexico.com/Mandarin/1/
http://www.study-mexico.com/Portuguese/1/
http://www.study-mexico.com/Spanish/1/

When pages from the non-English pages appear in the search engine
results, they often have English in the description.  Also,
unimportant information - like the date - appears.  Here are a couple
of examples:

Embajada de Canada en Argentina - [ Translate this page ]
TEFL & Spanish Programs in Mexico! Oct 01, 2004, Select a Language:
English Actions speak louder than words. ... 
www.study-mexico.com/Spanish/ 10/embajada-canada-argentina.cfm - 35k -
Cached - Similar pages

Embajada de Canada en Israel - [ Translate this page ]
Study in beautiful Guadalajara! Sep 30, 2004, Select a Language:
English Ignorance ...
www.study-mexico.com/Spanish/ 10/embajada-canada-israel.cfm - 35k -
Cached - Similar pages

Here is my question.  What can we do to improve the relevance of these
descriptions?

Thanks.

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Request for Question Clarification by scriptor-ga on 12 Oct 2004 08:32 PDT

Dear fullthrottle,

I have found the reason for the problem. But as it seems, changes in
the websites' design will be necessary to correct this. Would you like
me to explain what the matter is, so you can instruct the designer to
implement the changes?

Regards,
Scriptor

---

Clarification of Question by fullthrottle-ga on 12 Oct 2004 10:28 PDT

Scriptor,

Yes, I would like you to explain what is required, so I can pass the
instructions along to our designer.  Feel free to use technical
jargon.  Although I probably won't understand, our designer will.

Thanks.

fullthrottle-ga

Dear fullthrottle,

The brief descriptions in search engine listings are taken direct from
a site's content. A site's content (or more precisely: its source
code) is being analyzed automatically by a bot. The bot searches the
code to find out what parts will be visible text when the site is
displayed on a screen. After all, the visible text usually is the most
important element for the visior. He expects to find the search terms
the search engine delivered results for.

The Google descriptions consist of a site's tagline (the short
descriptive text in the bar at the very top of the browser), and the
first lines of visible text (unless the search terms point at various
sections of the content).

For analyzing your problem, I searched for and found one of your sites
to get an example to work with:
http://www.study-mexico.com/Spanish/10/embajada-canada-israel.cfm

I then analyzed the source code and found out that, except for the
tagline, the source code lists the first parts of text to display in
this order:

- The short slogan unter the "Vancouver Language Centre" logo; in this
case, it was "Study in sunny Mexico!"

- The date

- The language change option together with the first language name
from the pull-down list

- The quotation, in this case "Teaching is the art of assisting
discovery. - Mark van Doren"

All this visible text comes before any lines referring to the site's
actual content. Since search engine bots can't decide what parts of a
text are important, the best solution to get useful descriptions of
your sites into the Google results is the following:

Put a brief paragraph at the top of each site that contains the
description you'd like to see in search engine results. This text must
appear even before (that means: above) the small slogan, the date, the
language selection field, the quotation and the Google field. Use
visble text for it! Though it is possible to make text transparent and
thus "visible" for the bot, but not for the visitor, search engine
bots often recognize this as an attempt to cheat.

That is the easiest solution to your problem. And it has the big
advantage of being very sound and reliable.


I hope that this will help!
Regards,
Scriptor

Very fast answer.  Scriptor is quick, as well as generally helpful!