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Ask HN: Google copying website data to SERP. What can I do?

8 points by Cherian ↗ HN
I run a food blogging platform and yesterday a blogger pointed out Google SERP showing recipes in context [1]. Technically recipes aren’t copyrightable but Google resorting to this will have a significant effect on search engine referral traffic. I think complaints will only end up in demoted ranking.

HNers, what can I do here? For context, Here’s Matt Cutt’s question that led to an outrage [2]

[1] http://d.pr/i/13mGj

[2] https://twitter.com/danbarker/status/439125570115223552

10 comments

[ 14.7 ms ] story [ 491 ms ] thread
rbinv
Well, an extreme "solution" would be to noindex the site.

However, I noticed that your meta descriptions are really long. Maybe you should try to shorten them and hope that Google shows them instead.

Cherian
This is not restricted to me, but a lot of food bloggers who are not on my platform.
Someone1234
"Outrage." Uhh yeah, sure, ok.

Google have had rich snippets for years (at least 2011). You can manage them in WebMaster Tools if you don't want them for your properties. Here's some links:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/146645?hl=en

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/173379?hl=en

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/99170?hl=en

It is a little unfortunate that it is opt-out rather than opt-in, but unfortunately a lot of sites don't give SEO enough attention and as a result the functionality would rarely work.

rbinv
His SERP snippet doesn't seem to be a rich snippet (except for the 372 cal, maybe).
Cherian
Our recipes are in microdata format
toomuchtodo
> Technically recipes aren’t copyrightable but Google resorting to this will have a significant effect on search engine referral traffic. I think complaints will only end up in demoted ranking.

Not technically, actually. You can't copyright recipes. Your options are:

* Live with it

* Noindex and live with your site not being indexed by Google.

dragonwriter
> Technically recipes aren’t copyrightable

Per the US Copyright Office [0], that's true insofar as a "recipe" is a "mere listing of ingredients" (which is not what Google is showing), but not necessarily true beyond that.

[0] http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.html

Cherian
Precisely the point. They are showing the steps too.
saluki
Just taking a quick look it appears you need to add a description tag to tell Google what you want displayed in the SERP.

<meta name="description" content="A description of the page" />

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/79812?hl=en

Just taking a quick look at your source code I don't see one (at least for the particular page in your screenshot).

If you don't provide a description Google pulls text from your page it things is most relevant or would be most useful to searches.

I would test out adding a description to that page and I expect that would be displayed in the SERP after a crawl/few days.

Hope that fixes your issue.

Nice ranking in the SERP by the way.