Hi there,
Firstly, some information about the descriptions that appear in search
results.
There are 3 common methods that search engines use to obtain and
display details about a website:
Meta Description tag
--------------------
Pro - Readable.
Con - Controlled by the owner/designer of the website, and therefore
could be used to misrepresent the site's true content.
Directory description
---------------------
Pro - Written by an unbiased 3rd party.
Con - Often out-of-date, and can take months to be changed (especially
if the editors are volunteers and the service is free, like at Dmoz).
Can be bland, as editors try to just list the facts, not ad copy.
Google
------
Google looks for the keywords in the body of the web page, and returns
them, plus a few words surrounding them, as a description. If the site
is listed at Dmoz, Google often displays the description from there as
well.
Pros - Shows the context of the keywords. This is great for
experienced searchers. Always up-to-date (within a month). Unbiased.
Cons - Novice searchers can have difficulty working it out. There will
be different descriptions for the same page, when different keywords
have been searched for. Very hard for the owner/designer of the
website to optimize for.
What the Google Spider sees
---------------------------
While it shouldn't be considered definitive, at Search Engine World
there is a spider simulator tool:
http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/sim_spider.cgi
...which is very good for showing what most search engines see from
the URL you enter.
Google Dance
------------
At present Google is updating its index. Sometimes when you search you
will see the old description for your site. Sometimes the new one.
This mix of old and new happens because Google has hundreds of servers
to update, and some ISP caches take a while to change as well - this
hiccup of sorts is affectionately known as the Google Dance.
Read a discussion on descriptions during the Google Dance period at
WebMasterWorld:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/3752-3-15.htm
Your Dmoz listings
------------------
Commercial Mortgage Yes - Mortgage broker offers commercial mortgages
in all 50 states.
http://dmoz.org/Business/Financial_Services/Mortgages/
Commercial Mortgage Yes - Profile, listings, online application,
employment, contact information.
http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/New_York/Localities/N/New_York_City/Brooklyn/Business_and_Economy/Financial_Services/Mortgages/
Dmoz solution
-------------
The only search engine of any importance affected by Dmoz listings is
Google.
The Brooklyn listing is the one you are wishing to change. This is one
of the downsides to Dmoz - editors can be torn between trying to give
a site a fair, nicely written description, and following Dmoz
guidelines which promote unemotive, bland, factual descriptions.
If the submitter doesn't include a description, Dmoz software grabs
the Meta Description from the site concerned. If it looks okay, most
editors won't change it. The first listing is your Meta Description,
although the editor has stripped the keywords from the end of it.
Because the Brooklyn listing is localised, and local entries have
specific editing criteria, it is hard to use the same description,
because it mentions all 50 states.
Think up a description which doesn't detract from the fact that your
business is based in Brooklyn, something like:
"Provider of residential and commercial mortgage, financing and loan
solutions."
or
"Real estate directory of broker listings, FSBO, law firms,
appraisers, and real estate resources."
(might not work, as the directory is not the main focus of your site)
The Brooklyn category doesn't have an editor listed, which means the
editor for the category above is in charge of it. You need to go back
to
http://dmoz.org/Regional/North_America/United_States/New_York/Localities/N/New_York_City/Brooklyn/
Where you will find an editors name. Click on the link to contact
him/her. Politeness is a key factor.
Google solution
---------------
When people search for "commercial mortgages" you want them to read a
nice description. Write a short description that begins with
"Commercial mortgages", and runs for 7-10 words. Place it on your
index page, closer to the top is better. Remove this phrase from the
rest of the page. This will force Google to use the only sentence that
has the phrase in it.
Another trick which can work is to place a phrase in an image ALT tag.
If this is the only place where the keyword is mentioned on the page,
Google will use it.
But wait a few days for Google to stop dancing, so that you can see
the stable results and how your site is described.
Search strategy
---------------
"google description" dmoz
://www.google.com/search?q=%22google+description%22+dmoz
Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga |
Clarification of Answer by
robertskelton-ga
on
02 Nov 2002 18:09 PST
Hi again,
I wouldn't be concerned about the lack of related sites - it is quite
common, and doesn't appear to reflect the quality or ranking of a
site. Google themselves, as an example, only have 29 related sites:
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=related:www.google.com/
While Yahoo Australia only have 10:
://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=related%3Awww.yahoo.com.au%2F
The best way to stop search engines from indexing the directory part
of your site is by using a META robots tag, like this one:
<META NAME="Robots" CONTENT="No Index, No Follow">
Place this tag between the HEAD tags on any page that you do not want
indexed, such as the page that is the entry to your directory, and any
page within the directory that might be linked to from outside your
site.
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