We know Google has been using machine learning and more recently, AI, to generate search result snippets descriptions. Well, here is an example of Google getting a snippet not just wrong, but downright insulting.
Andrew Cock-Starkey posted an example on LinkedIn of Google not using the text on the page, but rather calling the page in the search result "very long-winded version" of whatever the article is about. And no, those words, are not on the page.
Thanks, Google, for your opinion on the writing style of this content...
Here is that snippet:
I was also able to generate the non-AI version, which instead uses the content from the page for the description:
Andrew wrote:
We've all seen Google rewrite meta descriptions but this one stopped me in my tracks."Curt" would be one way to describe it. I'm not sure The Spectator would be thrilled with the summary?
I checked and double checked the code of the page, it's very much not even close to the meta description provided.
Google's very own documentation says "Snippets are primarily created from the page content itself. However, Google sometimes uses the meta description HTML element if it might give users a more accurate description of the page than content taken directly from the page."
But I guess not in this case...
That being said, this is kind of a wild example of AI giving us its thoughts of the content of that page.
Of course, the SEO community is having a field day with this in the comments section of that post.
Forum discusson at LinkedIn.
