Meta Description Question

[Data Glasses]

Do you think it's wise to change the meta description?
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This is actually regarding ebooks, there is section that offers the chance to do a meta description but consider this to be a general question, regardless
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Thanks in advance

 

[Guidex]

Could you clarify what you mean by 'change the meta description'?

Depending on your CMS, it may auto populate the description with the first XX characters of content
If it doesn't, you should change it to include keywords and relevant wording to increase CTR

If you're using wordpress, YOAST SEO or a similar plugin will give you the option to alter the description bulk across your pages, it also gives you tips on lack of present keywords and relevance to page content.

 

[Data Glasses]

Thanks, I am aware of your info, The meta description is what the search engines read, this is what I am referring to. The first 160 characters is what gets indexed if doing a meta description, if there is no meta description the first 160 characters are read instead. The question is about changing the Meta Description when there is already one in place, Is there a time frame for this to be read by google? As mentioned the ebooks I list for sale have an option for doing a meta description and I have recently changed a few. Unlike websites I can't resubmit them to get crawled, cheers

 

[Guidex]

I understand that. Why can't you recrawl the individual pages? If you use webmaster tools you can opt Google to recrawl the particular page.

Search engines say there is no direct ranking benefit from the meta description – they don’t use it in their ranking algorithm. There is an indirect benefit, though: Google uses click-through-rate (CTR) as a way of determining whether you’re a good result. If more people click your result then they’d expect based on your position, they move you up. This is why optimizing the meta description is so important, as is optimizing your titles.

 

[Data Glasses]

The pages used for the meta description are from smashwords.com.
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https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/496104
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A search in google for Bad Taste Tales shows the old meta description, not the new update
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Not really sure how to get google to crawl a site I do not own or have listed in search console? Happy to hear how to do it. The crux of what I am asking is how long until a new meta description is picked up, that's all i need to know, thanks all

 

[Guidex]

I don't know the current automatic crawl rate, but if you add your website to google webmaster tools and go to the crawl section you can manually crawl and it usually updates in like 24-48 hours. Individual meta descriptions per ebook would help your CTR

 

[Data Glasses]

I cannot add a website that I have no control over to my search console tools, cheers

 

[Guidex]

Oh it's not your website! Sorry that wasn't clear. It will take X days for it to update automatically.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah it can take up to 90 days for a site you don't own to get re-indexed. It may be possible to ask the site, to add a new sitemap to their console account to purge existing results. You could also try the fetch as google bot, to recrawl a specific page, not sure if this will work for a site you don't own (probably not). https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6065812?visit_id=1-636190902058513271-3491308016&rd=1

 

[Guidex]

Yeah it can take up to 90 days for a site you don't own to get re-indexed. It may be possible to ask the site, to add a new sitemap to their console account to purge existing results. You could also try the fetch as google bot, to recrawl a specific page, not sure if this will work for a site you don't own (probably not). https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6065812?visit_id=1-636190902058513271-3491308016&rd=1

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url
Try this link

 

[Christopher]

Yep that's the one.

 

[Data Glasses]

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url
Try this link

Yep I did try, interesting to see how it goes, cheers !