Hi ...I've seen some strange behaviour going on with my meta description, I have a blogger blog and I clearly set my home page meta description like the following <meta content=' ********* *** **** *** ****** *********** * ******** ****, ******* *** *****. name='description'/> Everything was fine but a couple of days ago my meta description looked like this on Google: 03 OCT 2009 ... ********* *** **** *** ****** *********** * ******** ****, ******* *** *****. I don't understand why Google included a post date, at first I thought it's because the meta description is short but in the webmaster tools it said nothing about a short meta description. and not only that but because my meta description changed my serp went down. But when I checked today, my meta description went back to normal without the post date infront of it and the serp is going back up. I'm still not sure the cause of the change but I've been thinking it's because that post I made 03 OCT 2009 was pushed to the second page since I posted new content. And since that post isn't on the homepage anymore Google isn't including "03 OCT 2009" infront of my description tag, but than again why didn't Google include another post date that's currently on the homepage?, why did Google go back to listing my original meta tag? I would really appreciate if someone can tell me what's going on, I want my meta description to stay stable because if I reach top position and it changes again I will lose my ranking. Can anyone help?
I have never seen such behavior ever, may somebody else help you and me to curious to learn about it if it can happen so as you described.
I've been looking around for a while now, and I found that google started to include the Date Prefix in the description tag for sites like blogs & forums, but I'm puzzled as to why google uses old dates and I still want someone to confirm weather it affects the serps or not.
Why do you think something is wrong just because you do or do not get a post date with your snippet? Google is constantly testing new ways of displaying their SERPs. The snippet is probably the MOST tested portion of a SERP listing. It's not unusual for them to show a date like this when they think displaying it is beneficial for the user.
My site is still new so the fluctuation could have been a coincidence, but I assumed it was the post date which caused the fluctuation because I've heard if you make changes to your meta title/description you lose ranking. And why would google include a post date on my home page description tag?, shouldn't the date only be included on the post pages.