I noticed that on the SERPs, Google is not displaying the description on the meta tags. Instead, it displays the very first sentence containing the searched phrase on the content.
If google doesn't like your description tag it will create its own version so keep it relevant. Don't use it for a keyword cushion and keep it targeted.
Okay. an example is this one http://www.karadar.it/Dictionary/abe.html it displays the first sentence of the content instead of the description on the meta.
That's strange. If you have no meta description tag, google shall use the first sentence of your page in their listing. But if you have such a tag, google will use it. My site www.gtravelsources.com, firstly has no description tag, so googel listed it as home | hotel | etc. But after adding a meta description tad, 2 days later, google showing the description from that tag. I don't think google is so smart as they can make a description tag for a website, because it's not human editor. I think you shall contact their tech support staff.
Yea prolly, but the URL i have posted above HAS a meta description but that's not the one being displayed on the URL. I have seen several sites like that the past few days.
No don't contact them. They say they will create their own description of your site if they don't like yours(isn't relevant enough or appears spammy etc). Sometimes they make a good one and sometimes it isn't so good. BTW mate I just checked and am getting the following as your desc meta tag: Musica Classica - Classical Music - Klassische Musik - Karadar Bertoldi Ensemble - Dizionario della Musica Classica - Classical Music - Klassische Musik ... But keep in mind that looks like keyword stuffing and don't expect google not to think it is so I would recommend both for google and your visitors to change it.
I have posted before about Googles new way of doing things, or at least trying to do things and I think this is one of them. My prediction is that Google is going away from all META tags, maybe they'll keep the title tag, but keywords and description is going away because of spamming, keyword stuffing and other things, and they are going to/are using LSI instead. In the (near?) future none of the tags will matter since it will all be about the content of the page.
Google has started paying less importance to meta tags. Usually it will take a sentence from the start or middle or from the end of the page document which seems relevant to the searched term and display it in the SERPs.
The problem I see with google not paying attention to a meta description tag is the fact the content is read from top left to bottom right... This means most pages will get the same description (the left navigation) and hence increase the likelihood of google not indexing the site due to triggering a spam filter based off the navigation that would show up in every page. If they are going to ignore meta description completely - then they are going to give increasingly inaccurate results based on navigation menus rather than the actual page content.
Right @visio. I just checked the site on the SERP and is now displaying the meta description. But other day was different. Weirddd
It also looks as if it could be the navigation menu that google have decided to use and thereby creating a problem with indexing and making it look like keyword stuff when in fact it is simply the navigation that appears on every page in the site. So are google wanting to penalize 90% of the sites online that use left navigation?