Sometimes our meta description being displayed is not ours?

[pac-cooper]

We just launched our new website a week ago (also switched to Wordpress). Yesterday I noticed that sometimes our homepage Meta Description displays something different in Google results than what we have set. I had others confirm the same result on their computers. I asked all who have been involved with marketing for company if that description was ever used for the company, as it seemed odd and worded very strange. No one has ever seen this or used this on any of our listings, social profiles etc ever. I check my meta descriptions set for home page and they were still correct. Also did a view source for cache page by Google and it showed the correct Meta Description. Still confused, I did an exact match search on the description and came up with about 30+ spam/link farm type of websites with this odd description noted by our name along with a link back to us. We never asked or paid for these. Why are they there? And how could this influence our homepage meta description? This has me very concerned that we might already be getting hacked. I see no other issues with the site.

Looking for any help regarding:

• Why is the odd meta description showing up sometimes?
• Why do we have backlinks from these random sites?
• Is this all connected? Maybe trackbacks and pingbacks?

Any help you can provide me is appreciated. Thanks!

whJRuuQ

[David-McGawn]

Meta Description sometimes are now pulled from the main body content, Google is getting more and more good at finding the most relevant content on a page to display to a particular search.

In the future i can see Meta Descriptions being dropped just the same as the Meta Keywords have

Hope this helps

[pac-cooper]

David - This incorrect meta description does not appear anywhere on our website or anywhere on our Google+, social sites, etc.

[David-McGawn]

Old indexed content??

[N1ghteyes]

Can you provide exactly what your seeing? (as in the full meta description that you think is incorrect and what it should be?)

This is what i see when viewing markup on your homepage, but with the above info i have no idea if thats correct or not

[pac-cooper]

Hi Toby - Please see the image in my first comment above. This includes screenshot of both variations.

[N1ghteyes]

Ah, completely missed the attachement.

I'll poke about and see if i can spot anything

[pac-cooper]

Doubtful. This was not on the old website. I'm told it was never used. See below, the wording is awkwardly worded, which makes me think it was a poor translation or something. Not sure.

"Manufactures a fencing system to protect pool systems from children."

[N1ghteyes]

Hmm i cant see anything funny going on, this is essentually what googlebot should see when viewing the page. If you'd been hacked i would expect to see the wrong description here.

http://www.evolvedwebsites.com.au/googlebot/view.php?url=protectachild.com&keywords=evolved+websites%2C+website&submit=VIEW+AS+GOOGLEBOT

If the site has been live a week, you might just be in a bit of a blip. Best thing i can suggest is request a reindex / new crawl in GWMT and wait it out. Google can take 3 ~ 4 weeks to update listings properly when meta information changes (in my experiance atleast)

[pac-cooper]

Ok. Will do.

Any recommendation as far as those 30+ backlinks from those link farm sites? It is strange that those are the only websites that include that incorrect meta description.

[N1ghteyes]

As with any backlinks you dont want, if you cant request removal you should disavow them in GWMT

[pac-cooper]

Good idea. Thanks for the help!