SERP display switching between normal meta description and 15+ items

[Fuel]

The site, www.myrtlebeach.com has been having an issue with the way it displays in search results for the keyword "Myrtle Beach hotels". It is showing as a bulleted/itemized list similar to what's mentioned in this Moz article

I'll begin with a little background. When I started working with the site it would display in SERPs as:

Myrtle Beach Hotels - Reviews, Deals, & Photos - MyrtleBeach.com
www.myrtlebeach.com/hotels/
70+ items - Compare Lowest rates & see reviews on Myrtle Beach Hotels
from $76. Holiday Inn Club Vacations Myrtle Beach - South Beach offers a ...
from $27. Located among the south end Myrtle Beach hotels, Holiday Sands ...

We did not want the site showing as an itemized list with 70+ items. We wanted it to show with the meta description we provided. 
Our first attempt at getting the SERP to display our normal meta description was to simply change the meta description. That didn't work.

Our second thought was to use pagination to reduce the number of items on the page. A few days after we implemented pagination we saw our normal meta description displaying in the SERP. Shortly after that we saw the SERP had reverted, but this time was showing 15+ items rather than 70+. This is when began seeing the SERP display change between a normal meta description and 15+ items.

In another effort to stop the 15+ items from displaying in SERPs, we added relevant blog content like "Top 10 Oceanfront hotels" and "Best Kid Friendly Hotels" to break up the hotel listings on http://www.myrtlebeach.com/hotels/. Again, our normal meta description displayed in the SERPs for the next few days, but shortly after reverted back to 15+ items. Since then we have been seeing the SERP switch between our normal meta description and 15+ items with no rhyme or reason. Because our listings are not using

• , I'm not really sure why the site would be displaying this way.

  Since I have been regularly monitoring the SERP for the keyword "Myrtle Beach hotels", myrtlebeach.com/hotels/ has ranked as high as 5 and as low as 10. I open an Incognito Window and I take screenshots almost daily. I then record how the site was displayed in the SERP and its rank. I also look at organic visits and a Value Per Entry metric I've created. (I looked at Value Per Entry to determine if someone seeing 15+ items was more apt to convert)

  Average Visits on days with a normal meta description - 182
  Average Visits on days with itemized 15+ description - 174

  Average Value Per Entry on days with a normal meta description - 131
  Average Value Per Entry on days with itemized 15+ description - 120

  Average Rank on days with a normal meta description - 7
  Average Rank on days with itemized 15+ description - 6

  This data shows that performance is better on days when the normal meta description is displayed regardless of rank.

  I have linked 2 screenshots for reference. The 2-6-14 screenshot shows the SERP display with 15+ items and the 2-7-14 screenshot shows the SERP display with the normal meta description we provided.

  My questions are:
  1. How does Google determine if a site should display in SERPs with an itemized or bulleted list?
  2. Is there something else I need to change on myrtlebeach.com/hotels/ to prevent it from displaying in SERPs with 15+ items?

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[vmialik]

Dr. Pete in this article should provide some answers, food for thoughts, and hopefully a suggestion:

http://moz.com/blog/how-do-i-get-googles-bulleted-snippets

Hope this helps!

[Fuel]

Thanks Vadim,

I actually mentioned that same article in the beginning of my post. It helped me understand that

• and

[Dr-Pete]

I wish I had a good answer. When Google takes liberties with snippets, it's not always easy to sort out why. The first stop is usually making sure the query is in the META description and the description isn't too long, and you've got both of those covered. Two long shots, but easy to try:

(1) Add the NOODP Meta Tag (). Sometimes, it prevents not only descriptions from the Open Directory Project, but also Google taking liberties. Sometimes.

(2) Consider pulling your domain name out of the META description. You're saying "Myrtle Beach Hotels" twice in both the title and META descriptions, and it's possible that that looks very slightly spammy to Google. If you can, make the description slightly more natural - the length is about right.

Again, these are in no way guaranteed, but they're easy to try. I don't think tweaking the structure of the page is going to help. It's not Google recognizing the search results that's a problem - it's why they choose to rewrite. Unfortunately, we don't have a good handle on the why, at least in some cases.