Question about chaning the order of information that Google sees

docwalker

I was reviewing the statcounter information for my smugmug site. This is a really cool analytical tool to figure out what people are looking for. One thing I have noticed is how many people are finding my site through google. I have been having really good luck getting very high rankings with my keywords. Often I am listed on the first google page on some subjects.

What concerns me is the information that google uses in its summary. From what I can tell google ignores anything in the header file for its summary. When searching by keywords the first thing that pops up is the keyword breadcrumbs. Then the page counts. Like this:

Docwalker's Photography - powered by smugmug - 3 visits - 11:46am[SIZE=-1]docwalker > keywords > highland dancing. keyword pages: 1. buy: photo · buy this photo photos · buy multiple photos | view · view cart ...
docwalker.smugmug.com/keyword/highland+dancing - 21k -[/SIZE]

The concerning part is the "buy" cart stuff. Is there a way to modify how this is picked up? I would prefer that google pick up the caption, keywords, or something else. Would shoving the cart stuff lower on the page and bringing the caption and keywords higher help? I know you really cannot control what google uses but putting other information first may help.

These photos are not the best illustration as they do not have captions. But, I have seen the same thing on photos that do have captions.

The reason I am concerned is that I do not want to drive someone away from looking at my photos by seeing "Buy. Buy. Buy." as a first impression. I would rather they see the photos and then say, oh cool I can buy these.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Maybe point me to one of the cobranding threads on how to move these components?

Doc

rainforest1155

Great topic! Was wondering about this stuff, too. Hope somebody got an idea on this.

Happy New Year,
Sebastian

FormerLurker

A related question...
This may be self-evident, but I suppose it can't hurt to ask. If I keyword the gallery, but set the keywords not to display, will Google see them? I like the cleaner look of the screen without the keywords but don't want to give up the Google find-ability. I suppose Google is smart enough to ignore them if I set them to display, but set their color properties to be the same as the background (so they are there, but can't be seen by the user?).

rainforest1155

FormerLurker wrote:

I suppose Google is smart enough to ignore them if I set them to display, but set their color properties to be the same as the background (so they are there, but can't be seen by the user?).

I don't know if google still uses them when you customize your page to not show them using the abilities of a power account.
But whatever you do - don't create any 'user invisible stuff' with the same color as the background as google might think you try to push your rank in search engine with word lists! This could result in google listing you further in the back or even banning your site...

Sebastian