Google Sitemaps META tags give you more control of your search listing description.

Google Blogoscoped reports that Google has added a meta tag that can be used to stop Google from using the DMOZ site description in its search engine result listings.

DMOZ (or the Open Directory) is the web directory that provides the Google Directory of hand-picked sites with data.

Google will normally use one of three options when deciding on how to describe a web page in its results:

• A text snippet taken from the web page itself (normally text containing the search query keywords)
• The text found in the DESCRIPTION meta tag
• The DMOZ description

Many webmasters are unhappy with the DMOZ description, as it may give an incorrect impression of the content of a site or a page, it may be out or date or it is not “click-able” enough.

Insert the following tag in your HEAD section of the HTML code to stop Google from using the DMOZ description:

<meta name=”ROBOTS” content=”NOODP”>

See also: Inside Google Sitemaps: More control over page snippets