How did they do this?

[suzstephens]

My client wants me to change her site so that it will appear in Google with neary the same description as the site below, but I don't see how they did it. There's no description meta tag or text on the page. Would they have submitted the description to Google or is there some mysterious coding thing going on?

My client's site is currently showing her description tag; easy enough to change... but I'm still curious about this one.

Also, any idea how they get the Homes, Land, Duplexes and Commercial links to display?


Utah Real Estate - Your One Stop Source for Searching Real Estate ...
Search all property listings in Utah, includes pictures and detailed descriptions.
Utah Real Estate - Your One Stop Source for Searching Real Estate in Utah - 40k - Jul 24, 2007 - Cached - Similar pages
Homes - Utah Real Estate - Your One Stop Source for Searching Real Estate in Utah
Land - Utah Real Estate - Your One Stop Source for Searching Real Estate in Utah
Duplexes - Utah Real Estate - Your One Stop Source for Searching Real Estate in Utah
Commercial - Utah Real Estate - Your One Stop Source for Searching Real Estate in Utah
More results from Utah Real Estate - Your One Stop Source for Searching Real Estate in Utah >>


By the way, the reason she wants her site's description to say "search all property listings in Utah..." is that she really does offer searches among all the state's several MLS systems, whereas the site above is for the Wasatch Front MLS board, which does not include ALL Utah property listings.

Suzanne

[wige]

The text being displayed is from the company's listing in DMOZ. The "additional listings" charted below the main listings that point to internal pages is a bit more obscure, but it seems that these listings are generated when the web site significantly outperforms the other sites in the SERP for the entered search term, and/or Google knows that the site in general is a strong match for the entered term but the algorithm is unable to decide the most appropriate internal page to send you to, so it shows a "sectional list" of what it deems to be the most important and relevant pages.

[suzstephens]

Thanks Wige!

More questions, please: do I need to remove the existing description tags from the site or will the DMOZ description automatically override it (eventually).

Also, the description for the site I listed above incorrectly says that you can search all property listings in Utah when in fact, this search only covers one of 3 Utah MLS services. Is there any way to request or suggest a correction?

[martty]

The sub page links are called sitelinks and google do it algorithmically:
Webmaster Help Center - How do you compile the list of links shown below some search results?

To change the description, go to the DMOZ category that the site is listed in and click on 'Update URL' - an editor will change it if the suggested change meets DMOZ's guidelines.

[Duncan Pollock]

Several comments, if I may.
1. You should be able to find out how they do it by looking at the source code. I haven't taken the time to do this, but my guess is that there's the use of style sheets that result in the difference in each page (homes, duplexes, land, etc) but this is tied in with a common "upfront" appearance of the Utah Real Estate heading and logo.
2. The "similar sites" are in fact extension pages, all of them with the same main URL. There's simply a well designed internal linking system that lets a visitor browse whichever listing categories take their fancy.
3. With all due respect, though, this isn't the best real estate website I've seen. It represents only limited value to the searcher -- a thumbnail of innumerable listings, broken down into locales and types. I don't, in fact, see anything in the way of Tips for Sellers, Advice for Buyers, etc. Nor does it explain whether the listings are confined to those the company has or if the findings flow from the entire (local) MLS database. Thus, the only likelihood is requests for additional info and/or showings; i.e. the site is little more than a lead generation one, albeit this is a key wish of a lot of real estate companies (and why some of them actually pay for leads to the few sites whose speciality is exactly that).
4. There's also a need to compare the site with whatever others turn up in the SERPs -- again something I haven't bothered to do. In fact, no matter how much your client wants you to ape the site, she might do a whole lot better from a thoroughgoing re-design that anticipates and answers just about every question a potential seller or buyer might have.
5. Simply knowing there's access to a list of listings isn't the primary interest of people who visit real estate websites. They want, just as much if not more, to know the kind of company/agent they'll be dealing with. They want to feel that they're connecting with someone they can trust, who has some experience, who knows the market and its pluses and minuses. Even a nationwide mls database, such as Canada's mls.ca, does nothing to instill confidence. It merely provides a lot of listing details, which is only part of the story. And given that the Utah site may well be far from a complete database, it could be a quite limited source.
6. As so often is the case, the customer isn't always right. Yours can simply be suffering from the danger of a little knowledge. Your job is to educate her and it can involve giving what she needs rather than what she wants.

Duncan