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My client's site, which runs on Nuxt and Vue, is not showing meta descriptions on Google SERPs. They used to and as of last week they don't. Any idea why meta description tags would be stripped from the SERPs?

We are dealing with very low performance on page speed so I'm wondering if crawler is fetching code to render and gives up as it is taking too long. If this is the case, I would think Google would show the cached version of the tags until it can retrieve a new one. Has anyone seen this before?

See title tag and description tag missing in SERP. Client name has been changed for confidentiality but all else is the same:

enter image description here

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  • As a side note, there is no such thing as a "meta title." The page title is not a meta tag. It is in its own <title> tag, not in a <meta> tag. Furthermore, it is visible to users in the browser window title and tab which makes it not meta from a content display standpoint. Commented Jan 31, 2020 at 11:59
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    From your screenshot, it looks to me like Google is showing page titles in the search results with no snippet. Commented Feb 1, 2020 at 1:48
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    @RobT This was an example. That is not the actual domain. Commented Feb 3, 2020 at 20:07
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    Got it @DavidGarcia. Can you provide a live example of this that is not your client's site? I think it would be helpful to investigate Commented Feb 3, 2020 at 21:42
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    "very low performance on page speed" - Is this before anything is returned to the client? Are you building your entire page server-side and sending this once complete? Or sending back a sparse page initially and populating content using JS once the page has initially loaded? How slow are we talking? Commented Feb 6, 2020 at 23:24

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very important to take into account, the text within the meta descriptions are rendered at googles discretion meaning that Google could also create their own meta based on the content that's on the page.

The only instance that no-snippet would be shown intentionally is if you've included a tag onto your site1.

So things to check:

  1. The meta description is coded correctly in the source code of the page and there aren't no-snippet tags on the page, determine the scope of the issue (A few pages vs the entire site)

  2. I would check the cached version of the test page to ensure that Google previously picked up the meta descriptions to determine the timeframe the changed happened (look at changes in CTR in search console as well to see if there's any correlation)

  3. I'm not familiar with the platform the site is built on but that would be the next step in ensuring that if you created your meta descriptions through a plugin there isnt a conflicting plugin making the meta unreachable for crawlers.

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  • It's also useful knowing if different crawlers are picking up the meta description, if you're usinig screaming frog are different crawlers picking up the meta and it's just the SERPs that's not rendering them. Commented Feb 10, 2020 at 13:55
  • I am seeing everything come through in Screaming Frog but Google and Bing SERPs show no description. So this leads me to believe it's a page speed issue in that the bots aren't getting the assets on time. Can't confirm that though. Commented Feb 10, 2020 at 17:05
  • Is the HTML of the page not showcasing <meta> tags before hitting any JS? Even if the JS is showing down the page, the crawlers should pick up and render the meta tags similar to the title tag and viewport meta being picked up. Also there would be a noticeable difference in the speeds your page was clocking before this issue appeared compared to now. Have you realized a drop in page speed? Commented Feb 11, 2020 at 14:59
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It might be because the usual meta description doesn't work. Try this instead,

<meta property="og:description" content="your content">
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    Do you have any logical reasoning / evidence behind this suggestion? Which tags does Google use for displaying titles and descriptions in the search results? Commented Feb 6, 2020 at 23:18
  • No reasoning, but I have experienced this. Used a SEO plugin in my WordPress website , and all my meta descriptions got blank in SERP. So I had to enter this meta property tag i manually. Commented Feb 7, 2020 at 2:04
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    the og:description tags are going to be for social platforms if I'm not mistaken. But it would be the exact same content as the meta description tag Commented Feb 7, 2020 at 22:00
  • oh.Ok. Thanks for clearing that up, I think the og:title too stands for same. I am new to all these and had experienced the same problem, So i went to my competitor website and did what he did. That's how got to know this and it worked. maybe it was due to some other reason. Commented Feb 8, 2020 at 1:38

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