Hello,
When I search for a published website in Google, the page is shown with the following meta description:
However, this is not the correct description. I have set the meta description properly in the page’s meta properties as follows:
My question is:
Is there any way to force Google to display the set meta description correctly in the search results?
Looking forward to your feedback.
Well, I Googled that:
And the answer from GPT:
No—there’s no switch that tells Google “always show my <meta name="description"> verbatim.”
Google treats the tag as a suggestion, then builds a snippet it thinks will best satisfy the specific search a user just typed. You can only influence that choice; you can’t force it. (developers.google.com)
| Reason | Typical symptom | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| Better query match in on-page text | Snippet contains sentences from the body that include the user’s keywords | Make sure those keywords also appear naturally in your meta description |
| Meta description off-topic / duplicate / wrong length | Snippet is replaced or truncated | Keep each description unique, on-topic and ~140-160 chars (desktop), ≤120 chars (mobile) (converted.co.uk) |
| Technical directives override it | No snippet at all or an unexpectedly short one | Check for nosnippet or restrictive max-snippet values in the robots tag (yoast.com, developers.google.com) |
| Query-specific “dynamic” snippet | Different description shows for different searches | Normal—Google may highlight review scores, prices, etc.; cannot be disabled except with nosnippet |
Recent studies still show that Google rewrites or shortens the supplied description roughly 60 % of the time in 2025, so some overrides are inevitable. (converted.co.uk)
HTML hygiene
Exactly one well-formed <meta name="description" content="…"> in <head>.
Use valid HTML; malformed markup can make Google ignore the tag. (developers.google.com)
Relevance & length
Summarise the most important user-facing value of the page in ≤160 characters.
Include primary keywords and phrases users actually type so the tag answers their intent. (converted.co.uk)
Avoid duplication
Every indexable page needs its own description. When Google sees the same copy on many pages it usually rewrites.
Use the snippet-control directives (carefully)
<meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:320"> – lets Google know your preferred maximum length is 320 characters (adjust as needed). Google will still overwrite if your tag is longer. (developers.google.com)
data-nosnippet – wrap pieces of on-page text you don’t want to appear in the snippet. (distinctly.co)
nosnippet – last-resort; hides all snippets (not recommended unless legal/privacy issues exist).
Ensure Google re-crawls the new tag
Update <lastmod> in your XML sitemap.
Use URL Inspection → Request indexing in Search Console.
Check that the page isn’t blocked by robots.txt and that the canonical URL points to itself.
Supportive structured data
Adding relevant schema (e.g. FAQPage, Product) can sometimes give your preferred summary more weight, or replace the standard snippet with a rich result.
Give it time
Even after successful re-indexing Google may cache the older snippet for days to weeks, especially on low-traffic pages. Patience is required.
You can’t force Google to print your meta description exactly, but by making it the most succinct, query-matching, technically sound summary of your page—and by removing technical road-blocks—you greatly improve the odds that Google will show it more often and rewrite it less.
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