Why is the description in search results different from meta description?

Answer

The description in search results can be different from meta description if there is an open graph description on the page. Also, if the page description has been updated recently, then it might not have been indexed yet, so make sure the page is indexed by going to the Domains section and using “Diagnose Page“ to re-index the page.

For website search collections, the value of the description field is determined by the following precedence:

  • Open graph description (og:description)

  • Meta description of the page

  • If both of the above are missing, the crawler will usually take a snippet from the page body and use this as the description