I Thought My Post Was Hijacked
This is a different problem. I have had my content stolen before when someone takes it all and pastes it onto their site. I had to report it to the search engines and it get taken down. Today I found something odd when looking at my post in the Bing and Yahoo search results. I thought my post had been hijacked again! As it turns out it wasn't but this could still throw you for a loop like it did me.
I was looking at the search results in Bing and saw one of my posts there. It has my title, my header image and my link. The link goes to my site. That is all fine. However, the description in the search result list is NOT mine. It is somebody talking about their wife being pregnant in relation to the topic of the post. I don't have a wife, I have a husband. This description is clearly written by someone else. But how? And why? It also looked familiar. I had seen this written somewhere else.
If they copied my content and used it for their website it would at least make sense. In this case the link still goes to my site however. If someone clicks on it they go to my site. So why have the different description and HOW did they change it?
The only changing going on is by the search engines themselves. Nobody altered anything or stole anything. The description on the search results is part of a comment someone left on that post. The search engines apperently think this person's comment is a better description of my post than the description I wrote. This is annoying. I want the description I wrote for my post, not part of a comment someone else wrote. The comment uses poor grammer too so I am not sure why the search engines picked it!
So, if you see your post in the search results and don't recognize the description, it may be pulling from a comment you received on that post. I guess I could edit the comment to fix the poor grammer so it does not look so bad on the description. Or I could turn off the comment I guess but that seems ridiculous to need to get rid our comments just to force the search engines not to use them for our description.
Intersesting side point. My description in Google is what I wrote. Bing and Yahoo are using the comment. I really like Bing generally, but I am not crazy about this.
Jessica
Recent Comments
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That is strange Jessica. Sounds like someone hacked your password or Bing is having a problem. I don't know what to think. I don't think there is a way to contact Bing to get it corrected. Hope you get it worked out...
Ray
No, I don't think anyone hacked me since I went and looked in Wordpress and my description is just as I wrote it. Nothing on my website has been changed. The change is what Bing is pulling to use for the description. They can do this if they want to. We only have an illusion of control!
I could edit the comment to fix the poor grammar at least or turn off the comment altogether.
I have had a similar situation with Bing. Who knows why, but the description does not do my post any good - makes it look spammy when its really not.
Yes, it is very frustrating! I guess I can edit the comment or delete it. Then Bing would have to pull the description from somewhere else but who knows what they would pick!
Hi Jessica,
Really? This is strange. Why would they replace your description with someone's comment? They are doing some weird things.
Much success to you!
Kind regards,
Nichola
I really don't know. I have heard the search engines can do whatever they want in this regard. I don't know the specifics of how they do it or why though.
Thank you!
Jessica
Hmmm.... That is interesting. Good insight to share with us. I know if I saw it, I would freak out.
Best wishes,
Karin 😁
Thanks Karin. It is annoying but not the end of the world I guess. I hope they don't start doing this all the time though. The grammar is so bad I really hate that it is showing up as the description!
Wow, Search Engines really are crazy. This is why it kind of sucks that the description is only a guideline. They can willy nilly pick whatever they want, even if it's unrelated to your post. Crazy. Sorry Bing and Yahoo are nutty.
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I have had descriptions show up from different articles that I have written before, but not to the article that I see on Yahoo and Bing. It is a bit frustrating.
Yes. I found this article that explains a bit more about why they change our descriptions and even titles. https://www.firstscribe.com/google-change-title-description-search-results/