Meta description off if search is for web address

[carmen617]

Hi, I am not a web developer at all. My site is a homemade one that I put together using the free website builder tool at my host (Ionos), and I have a meta description that I thought was working fine. But, when I tell my residential clients to type in my web address, they invariably put it in the search box, not the address bar. And when they do, the meta description is populated by text pulled off the bottom of my home page, the name of a reference and my contact information. Examples pictured below. Any easy fix?

 

[glennd]

Maybe Lisa @callthatgirl has some ideas?

 

[Markverhyden]

I'm confused. That's the expected behavior, more or less, when you type a site name, partial or whole, into a browser search bar. Can you provide a screen shot of what you think it should be like. Different website is fine.

Of course I'm not a website developer and I didn't sleep at a Holiday Inn Express recently.

 

[Sky-Knight]

The screen shots are right there...

The only suggestion I have is to reindex the site, get into the Google webmaster tools and see what's there... because having two listings for the same URL is odd.

 

[carmen617]

I'm confused. That's the expected behavior, more or less, when you type a site name, partial or whole, into a browser search bar. Can you provide a screen shot of what you think it should be like. Different website is fine.

Of course I'm not a website developer and I didn't sleep at a Holiday Inn Express recently.

There are actually two screen shots there. The first is what happens when you type "computermom" into the google search box, and that's what i want to show up. The other is what you get when you type "www.thecomputermom.com", my website URL, into the search box. The metadata for the home page pulls some text off the bottom of my webpage, not the page description I've set up. I actually looked again at the controls I'm given in their website builder software and it looks like there is another place where I can put a page description for the entire site. I changed it to my preferred text and the behavior didn't change, but I'm wondering if it will take some time to populate, so I'm giving it a few days.

It's not a huge issue, but my little old ladies are really confused about why my website description's first word is someone else's name.

 

[Markverhyden]

There are actually two screen shots there. The first is what happens when you type "computermom" into the google search box, and that's what i want to show up. The other is what you get when you type "www.thecomputermom.com", my website URL, into the search box. The metadata for the home page pulls some text off the bottom of my webpage, not the page description I've set up. I actually looked again at the controls I'm given in their website builder software and it looks like there is another place where I can put a page description for the entire site. I changed it to my preferred text and the behavior didn't change, but I'm wondering if it will take some time to populate, so I'm giving it a few days.

It's not a huge issue, but my little old ladies are really confused about why my website description's first word is someone else's name.

You've got some pretty sharp little old lady customers. Most of my customers just look for hyperlinks. The change you made got rid of the hyperlinks when they search for thecomputermom. I'd want those back.

The Kathy, Dover is not at the end of the page, technically. If you do a view>source that block of the page starts at line 679 and ends at line 690 which ends with Kathy, Dover. The root page ends at 1207.

Edit: the link below has some interesting discussion.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/14843323?hl=en