GOOGLE ADDS SUPPORT FOR NOODP META TAG
July 13, 2006

Google this morning announced support for the NOODP meta tag, which directs Googlebot or any search engine that supports the tag, not to use Open Directory Project, or ODP information for the page's description in the SERP. (SERP is the Search Engine Results Page, the list of web pages the search engine returns in response to a keyword query. SERPs typically include links, titles, and brief contextual descriptions which reflect in bold the keyword's position in the content of the page.)

This is great news for site owners who felt that click-throughs were impeded by ODP titles and descriptions. The NOODP tag, first implemented by MSN, allows SERPs to present a more organic description, based on page content.

Following is the memo posted at Google Sitemaps Blog, written by Vanessa Fox, Google Engineering...

The way we generate the descriptions (snippets) that appear under a page in the search results is completely automated. The process uses both the content on a page as well as references to it that appear on other sites.

One source we use to generate snippets is the Open Directory Project, or ODP. Some site owners want to be to able to request not using the ODP for generating snippets, and we're happy to let you all know we've added support for this. All you have to do is add a meta tag to your pages.

To direct all search engines that support the meta tag not to use ODP information for the page's description, use the following:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP">
Note that not all search engines may support this meta tag, so check with each for more information.

To direct Google specifically from using this information to describe a page, use the following:

<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOODP">

For more information, visit the webmaster help center.

Once you add this meta tag to your pages, it may take some time for changes to your snippets to appear. Once we've recrawled your pages and refreshed our index, you should see updated snippets.