#Google says search result snippets primarily come from page content, not other sources
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Google removed references to rich results the snippet control help document.
What Google said. Google explained that it “Clarified in our documentation about snippets that the primary source of the snippet is the page content itself.” “The previous wording incorrectly implied that structured data and the meta description HTML element are the primary sources for snippets,” Google wrote.
What changed. Google updated the snippets control help document to change the lead paragraph to say, “Google primarily uses the content on the page to automatically determine the appropriate snippet. We may also use descriptive information in the meta description element when it describes the page better than other parts of the content.”
“Google uses a number of different sources to automatically determine the appropriate snippet, including descriptive information in the meta description tag for each page. We may also use information found on the page, or create rich results based on markup and content on the page,” was the previous wording.
Google also removed all references to rich results in the document.
Why we care. Most of you probably already knew that Google primarily uses the page content for the snippets it shows in the Google Search results. But there are some cases where Google may use other HTML elements for your snippets. But primarily Google will pull that content from what it finds on the visible content on your pages.
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.
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