On certain occasions, Bing, Google and Yahoo will show search results that are referencing the information from dmoz.org, Open Directory Project. When this occurs, the actual Title and Description Tags from a web site are not used, but rather the Title and Description in the ODP is shown instead. Yahoo has even been known to show the Title and Description from the Yahoo Directory for a search query. This occurs when web sites are, not only in their own index when they have crawled a web site, but when the page also exists in the Yahoo Directory. These occurrences may be unwanted for web site owners because sometimes the information in the ODP and Yahoo Directory have become outdated or are no longer accurately depicting the web site’s products or services. Either way, there is an easy fix for webmasters.

A robots Meta tag should be created that tells the search engines not to use the ODP Title and Description. You can also include an action so Yahoo does not use the information from the Yahoo Directory. The tag is represented below.

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOYDIR, NOODP">

Simply put this tag in the Meta Tag section of your web site’s coding and the search engines will understand what you want them to represent in the search results. This being the actual Title and Description from your web site.