Ive noticed that the description of a site in G search results varies. Some text seems to be pulled from the DMOZ listing, others the title, meta description, first few lines of text on the site, or just plain random text on the site. Does anyone have a difinitive answer as to where the description of a site comes from...exactly?
Obviously. Depending on the search term entered I can get a different description for the same URL. Does G pull this at random or is there a method for the retrevial process?
No one knows except Google. Google's algorithms (including how they determine what snippet to use in search results) are only known by Google.
The description can be pulled from the description meta tag, Dmoz listing or onpage content. There may be other sources too.