Here’s one handy tool allowing you to play around to get an idea how your page listing might look within Google SERPs (well, actually, I’ve seen similar tools before but this one looks really cool):
- Enter your page title, meta description, URL and the term you expect it to be ranked for;
- Play with other options (show date, choose “forum” format: posts/author/last, preview as pdf page);
- Compare with current Google results for your “bold” search query
Additional features:
- Grab the link to your listing preview to be able to share it (with the client, for example);
- Compare your listing with current listings in one window:
Important: please keep in mind, it is not guaranteed your listing is going to contain your page meta description. Google generates the snippet based on the separate algorithm and will pick it from your on-page text or meta description depending on the fact which one looks more relevant to the search phrase.
The tool was reviewed under SEJ policy.
Similar to this one here by SEOmofo
This tool will come in very handy on my next Meta-makover.
I think too many SEOs take for granted the power of finely crafted meta snippets and titles.
The irony is both are (very) slightly off in how the SERPs display the snippets.
Demerzel: Please elaborate – if it’s something that can be fixed I’ll update the tool
Bjorn,
Very nice! I considered adding a few of those features (e.g. date, bold words) to my version of the tool, but then Google released long snippets, inline sitelinks, blog snippets, review snippets, rich snippets, etc. etc. etc… all within like a 6 month period! I eventually concluded that I just don’t have the time or the interest to stay current with Google’s endless iterations. But I commend you on going the extra mile with your version of the tool. :)
If you’re interested in reading about some pretty obscure snippet results, check out my snippet experiment page. One thing I never figured out was why Google adds a period to my home page’s snippet. If you do a site: command for seomofo.com, you’ll see my snippet’s description ends in a period–which is NOT in my code. Weird, right?
Cheers,
SEOmofo
Very neat little tool. I’m curious to know what Demerzel is specifically referencing, myself.
Maybe he’s just talking about something that is already noted: that search engines often include various snippets from your site to more accurately match search terms?
Thanks Darren and Noah!
I actually found the snippet experiments shortly after finishing the tool (unfortunately!). There’s definitely some interesting information and findings in them, like that period… very weird =)
Hey that snippet tool is pretty cool. Will be great to show clients, especially when they don’t have a clue what your talking about!