Hi, I would like to know where google gets the summary for my site? Is it from the directory submission I did? I would like to alter it slightly and optimize it to rank for and appeal to more keywords how do i do this?
You mean the description of your site when found through Google? META tags most likely. The following needs to be placed in the <head> part of your HTML code: <META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Description of your site"> Code (markup):
sometimes from meta tag description...other times from text on your page. You should be able to figure out which one it is.
Is your site listed at dmoz.org? If you can't find the description on your site that they are using, and your site is listed at dmoz, then most likely they are using the description from there. To prevent this, just add <meta name="robots" content="NOODP"> to the <head> section of your site.
It takes summary mainly from your meta descriptions. As "Sonicmayhem" mentioned sometimes it takes your summary from Dmoz listing and you can prevent that too.
Bang On! It entirely depends on the search term/keywords. If found within the meta description, the same generally gets displayed ... or else body text containing the search term/keyword.