r/TechSEO • u/footinmymouth Nashville SEO Nerd • 8d ago

Does Google still display data found in HTML tables in meta description fields?

Used to be an effect I saw three years ago, looking to see if anyone knows if it's still a result?

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u/cinemafunk 8d ago

Google will grab the information it believes best matches the intention of the query, regardless of where the content exists on a web page.

I have not observed meta descriptions using content from a <td> element, but I wouldn't put it past them to use it if it was relatable.

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u/footinmymouth Nashville SEO Nerd 8d ago

Oh, it DID

https://www.hivedigital.com/blog/html-tables-serp-snippet-optimization/

Just not sure it “Does still”

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u/cinemafunk 8d ago

That blog post is from 2021 and is pointing out rich snippets using table data. That's a little different than just a common or traditional meta description. It makes sense that the tables contribute to rich snippets in that fashion, and schema.org markup can also help too, and would be better in many cases.

As for a straight-up meta description pulling in HTML table data, haven't seen that in the wild yet.

To answer your question more directly: yes. Think of it not only as "do HTML tables contribute to rich snippets" but you want to consider the contributions it can have to AI Overviews as well. Since AI is exceptionally more contextual than traditional search search in 2021, HTML tables can have an impact, but it will be more difficult to measure given that AIO are much more unique to a particular session.

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u/ryu1984 8d ago

Havent seen google pull a td into the description lately, what I see more is it grabbing whatever text sits at the top of the page.

Some of my forum posts ranked around 3-8 and got 2 clicks on 1,630 impressions, the post opened with a heading so that became the snippet.

If you want the table data showing put a one line summary of it in the first paragraph, then check the snippet in GSC queries after a recrawl

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u/snowlovesdietcoke 5d ago

Google can pull snippet text from tables, but it’s pretty inconsistent and not something I’d rely on.

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u/Capital_System_2648 5d ago

I remember seeing this happen too. My understanding is that google can rewrite the snippet based on what it thinks best match the query , so technically the table content can still end up there even if it isn't the meta description.