I’ve recently noticed a ‘mash-up’ of review content being displayed as meta description for branded search query ‘melbourne functional medicine’. See screenshot.
At the time the screenshot was taken (2 days ago) we hadn’t recently updated our home page or the meta description. It’s not a new site and the site map is up to date.
Today, I’ve updated the meta to be strictly within the 160-character limit and changed the wording to target slightly different keywords. I’ll continue to monitor any changes.
Any idea why review content is being displayed? The content is not notable/significant in terms of relevant keywords.
It’s entirely up to Google what they choose to display.
The META description you specify is considered a recommendation. If it’s well written, concise, and Google thinks it represents the page content will, they might use all or part of it.
Thanks Michael - I suspected that might be the feedback. I’ve just been really surprised to see Review content there (above all the other optimised content on the page). Thanks for your response.
@Fiona1 - An approach I have used to have more control is to simply take screenshots of reviews then use the resulting images in the place of the content. You may need to use the picture element to deal with responsive issues since you can load different images on breakpoints.
