googled article descriptions unappealing?

eppyharmon · Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 14

When I type "www.epharmony.com" in google, I get a listing of all the google links to all the articles I've written on my blogsite, www.epharmony.com .

However, instead of including the first lines of the articles, or excerpts (which I would prefer) I get (following the name of every article):

[u]epharmony::Hurricane Katrina - A Convenient Scapegoat Arrives... http://www.epharmony.com/blog/_trackback/1192153. No trackbacks found. This blog does not allow anonymous comments. Please provide your username and....
www.epharmony.com/blog/2005Entries_archives/2005/9/2/1192153.html - 49k - Cached - Similar pages

The following is what I would PREFER to get on google:

[u]epharmony::Hurricane Katrina - A Convenient Scapegoat Arrives...
I’m frustrated. And not just by the tragedy that past political indifference has exacerbated in New Orleans, or by the obvious fact that the U.S. is as ill-prepared for serious trouble at home as it is anywhere else in the ...

Is there something I can do/change/fix on my blog to make my googled article descriptions more descriptive, as above? I always allow trackbacks....

Thanks for helping

eppyharmon
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All my best,
eppyharmon

john · Site Admin Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Posts: 3434

First, please see this article for some information on how to use the Additional <HEAD> Content setting in your blog control panel. You have content in there that should not be in there, and it is possible that could affect the content which appears in a search engine results page, not to mention cause your blog to display improperly in some browsers.

Is there something I can do/change/fix on my blog to make my googled article descriptions more descriptive, as above? I always allow trackbacks...

I don't believe that Google actually makes public the algorithm by which they create this description of your page.

According to Danny Sullivan, an expert on search engines and editor of SearchEngineWatch.com:

eppyharmon · Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 14

John-
Thanks for your response. I did change my head content as you suggested.

I still have a problem, however: Whenever I google a term I want to research, all the webpages that come up have an underlined title followed by the beginnings of a brief description--words from their content--usually, if not always, the first words in the content. My articles, unfortunately, are never described by their content, but always exactly like each other and the same way (except for my "links") (please see my specific description of the way my pages appear on a google search, in my earlier forum query)

I'm concerned that the very limited and repetitive description might be "caused" by being hosted at Blogharbor? Or I'm doing something wrong. Please let me know what I can do to my website to avoid the boring non-descriptive words that Google is picking up from somewhere in Blog Harbor and presently using to describe my pages (see my earlier letter)? I would very much like Google to pick up something/anything from my content as a descriptor. (I'm not picky what it is, as long as it's some kind of content and not what I'm getting.)

Thank you for your help,
eppyharmon
_________________
All my best,
eppyharmon

john · Site Admin Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Posts: 3434

I still have a problem, however: Whenever I google a term I want to research, all the webpages that come up have an underlined title followed by the beginnings of a brief description--words from their content--usually, if not always, the first words in the content. My articles, unfortunately, are never described by their content, but always exactly like each other and the same way (except for my "links") (please see my specific description of the way my pages appear on a google search, in my earlier forum query)

I don't see that as entirely correct. I did a few searches for recent phrases used on your blog, and these searches return exactly the kind of results you seem to be looking for:

Search for "God apparently intended for the world to be as it is"
Search for "Better to push than be pushed"
Search for "This is the latest segment of a 15-part series"
Search for "don't put a time limit on yourself, don't struggle"

As I mentioned in the previous article, the way you incorrectly entered plain text into then HEAD content is likely the cause of what you are seeing for past articles so you may need to wait a while before your site gets reindexed by Google in order to see any change to your past content.

eppyharmon · Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 14

Hi John,

Will you please check my heading to make sure I've done it right? If not, change it for me to make it work correctly? Thanks....

I hope you're right about that being the problem, and that now I just have to wait for Google to pick up the change. I wish I were more interested in the technical side of blogging--mostly I enjoy the writing....

Thank you again for your help.

eppyharmon
_________________
All my best,
eppyharmon

john · Site Admin Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Posts: 3434

Looks good from here. Google seems to be picking up your blog posts just fine; example.