Google Meta Description

[google junky]

I just noticed a change in Googles way of showing a sites description.

They were using meta description and text from the page (if it had a keyword searched for)
They have changed to only using a meta description as it seems now.
Luckily the sites I designed all had well optimized meta descriptions also.

Has anyone noticed any other changes?

[cbp]

They are also pulling descriptions from DMOZ.

CBP

[Faglork]

I cannot confirm that - just did some searches, and in all cases text was shown, not the description.

AFAIK it works this way (correct me if I'm wrong):

- if the search phrase is found in the page text, a snippet of the text including this phrase will be shown in the SERPs.

- if the search phrase is not found in the page text, but in the description, a snippet of the description including this phrase will be shown in the SERPs.

Alex

[Jason Tor]

The angelic MSN, the evil Google and of course the oh so consistent Yahoo all prefer to use the content of your site, however Alex is correct, if they cannot find your keywords in your description(which would be bad optimization and shouldn't be ranked to begin with) they will opt for a META description.

Jason Tor