3 Reasons to Turn Off Blogger Search Description

Search description in blogger is often used to improve search engine optimization (SEO) of a blog. But few know that turning off the search description feature in blogger is actually better than turning it on. Why is that? Keep reading.

What is the function of search description in blogger?

The search description performs the same function on any blog or website, namely to display descriptive information about a blog or an article. Through search descriptions, people can find out what a blog is all about.

The simplest definition of search description in blogger is a summary that describes a blog or post.

Many people activate search descriptions for search engine optimization reasons. If you notice some flaws in the search description, you might turn it off immediately. If you haven't enabled the search description feature in blogger, there's nothing you need to do.

Why should search description in blogger be turned off?

It is a place for keyword stuffing

Search description is often used as a place to store keywords haphazardly (keyword stuffing) and this is not liked by search engines like Google. Even though black hat SEOs find this method works for optimizing blogs on search engine results pages, sooner or later, a blog will get a warning from Google.

It is limited

Search description in blogger only allows you to put a 140 character long summary. With this very limited number, you can only put in a sentence or two and maybe not all keywords can be covered. If you turn off this feature, search engines will take the first few sentences of your post as a description. That is, even though the search description feature is turned off, it does not mean that your blog or posts on your blog do not have descriptions.

It limits search engines from displaying longer description

Search description restricts search engines from displaying longer post descriptions. By turning on search descriptions in blogger, you are intentionally limiting search engines like Google to only fetching the summary you provide as a post description. If you let Google determine the appropriate description for your post, then the most relevant sentences from your post will be taken as a description. Your posts may also contain keywords ranked by Google, which are not included in the summary you provide. Therefore, just let Google scan your post and determine or find the right keywords and sentences to be used as a description of your post (which of course is more than 140 characters).

Search Description and Noodp

Turning off search descriptions in blogger must be followed by setting a custom robots tag. If you enable search descriptions for your blogs and posts, then you need to use the noodp tag in the custom robots tag in blogger. This is so that Google actually uses the summary you provide as a description of the posts on your blog. Conversely, if you turn off search descriptions in blogger, you must also disable the noodp tag or Google can't crawl and index your posts because they can't find search descriptions in those posts.

More about Noodp: Custom Robots.txt for Blogger SEO

The search description feature in blogger has helped many people for search engine optimization (SEO) in a black hat way. By turning off this feature, even if you are not an SEO practitioner, your blog will have a greater chance of appearing on search engine results pages.