Hi. I am having an issue. The person who set up my website added some wrong details. So, under the description of my website it says some wrong information, but I have attempted to change this, and unfortunately it now shows two different descriptions when googling it.
I know this either sounds pretty rediculous, or confusing, but search my name on google, jessica engerman and you will see what I mean. The one that says i am a journalism major is the wrong one.
Any help would be very appreciated!!!
Looking for any advice or suggestions,
Jessica

Jessica what Google is showing is what you had on the page the last time they indexed it. That appears to be April 20th. If you click on the 'Cached' link towards the end of the listing you can see when they cached the page.

The results you see on any search engine aren't necessarily the current state of things, but rather the current state when they last visited.

The easiest solution is to simply wait and give them the time to come back to the page and re-index it. That will eventually happen though it might not be right away.

They will update the information though and you shouldn't need to do anything in order for that to happen.

Van,
Thanks a lot for the response! Really didn't think anyone would care enough about my 'issues' to respond!
Take care and God bless~!

To echo what Vangogh said, the easiest solution (although sometimes the most painful) is to wait for Google to updates it's information. However, in your case I don't think its the easiest solution, but the only solution. I just wanted to clarify a bit, you can't do much about what Google has cached.

Gosh, thanks so much. you guys are awesome, and I need all the help and clarification I can get.
I guess I will just wait then? Google kind of blows.
Jessica

Glad to help Jessica. That's what we're here for. Always feel free to ask questions.

What's the URL? If you put a link to that in here, it will give Google a little nudge to hurry up and come back.

www.jessicaengerman.com
Are you basically telling me that if i were to walk into fifty chat rooms and post my url google would reconfigure it?
That is some very useful information!
Thank you for the advice.
Always useful and appreciated.
Jessica

The reason John suggested posting the link is that this forum (as is the case with many forums) gets spidered frequently. Google will find this page and follow the link to your site. Every time they find your site is another opportunity for them to re-index the page. It doesn't work quite like that, but the idea is the more links pointing to your site the sooner the change to the description will happen.

If you add a link to your site in your forum signature and post more often that will create more opportunities for Google. It also creates more opportunities for people here to look at your site and potentially become loyal readers.

And yes it works if you go to other forums. But remember the quality of your post will always be more important than the link itself. It's the post that will convince real people to click the link.

Yes, well when I finish creating my website... (which while glancing at my sparadic groups of post- its reminding me of tasks i have yet to complete or in worst case scenario, begin), looks as though it may be a long time, I will certainly heed your advice, and post as much as possible on various sites that may encourage reader growth.
Currently, I haven't as much as a picture of myself, or one news story, so my website is in need of attencion!
Thanks for your suggestions! This whole internet thing is really wierd. I mean, I belong in the stone age! The idea that a site can and will re-index your web page as much as you link to it, well, that's kind of nuts.
You people... I don't know how you do it.
Jessica

Jessica we all started someplace. Believe me when I say at first this was all new to me to. You do what you can and ask questions when you need help and little by little you learn.

One good thing to learn is how to become a good searcher. Many times I've been stuck trying to understand something and went to a search engine and kept typing different search queries until I found what I was looking for. It led to many late nights searching, but in the end I would usually solve my problem and learn a few new things in the process.

And remember to set up a signature through your control panel and add a link back to your site.

Van, you're so right; I was just issuing that same phrase... "We all start somewhere," to a very good friend of mine regarding a bit different of subject matter though.
Van, thanks for all the good advice. I will certainly add a signature when i figure out how, but until then, this will just have to do...
Come on, control panel? What's that???

www.jessicaengerman.com

take care Van, and God bless you,

Jessica

Jessica it's pretty easy to set up a signature. After you login look in the upper right for the 'User CP' link. CP stands for Control Panel. Then look to your left. There's a lot of links in the menu on the left and I'll encourage you to click each and check them out since there's a lot of things you can set up to make your life on the forum a little easier.

The first link happens to be 'Edit Signature' When you click that you'll see an input box similar to the one you use to reply to a post. Just type away and save and you'll have a signature.

You'd make any text a link just like you do in posts. [ url=yourdomain.com ]text here[ /url ] without the spaces around url and /url.

After that whenever you post your signature will be there automatically.

Well, Van, is it true that some people keep on saying that Google gives low value to forum signatures. I've seen this is in a couple of SEO sites. I want to know more about this. Are forums using "nofollow" in signatures ? I know they do it in del.icio.us and Wikipedia. Please tell me.

And, Jessica, if you're ready to put in some money, buy a link at some popular site/blog which are indexed often. I think blogs,forums and news sites are indexed most frequently. Do it with Text-Link-Ads or consult the guy at the site directly. However, I'll add your site URL in all my site's pages.

* You're link has been added to the "Quality Websites" section. Hey, you using Joomla ?

Yes, I am using Joomla. I hope to create a forum, but I am not interested in spending any money in it. I will post a little byline on each of my articles, and send any interested reader to my site.
This site is mainly meant to profile my work as a journalist, to help me get jobs, kind of like an online resume, where i can just dish out the link.
I also run a charity, and I suppose that I will start adding some of the events, although it seems a wierd combination to have on one website, oh well, I am not getting another!
Thanks for adding me to your *quality websites, I really need to devote some time to working on it.
India hm? That's cool.
Alright Van, by following the directions, well, kind of siting them as i went along, let us see if this 'signature' is available now!!!

Jessica your signature seems to be working fine. Now just keep posting.

Sreejith when it comes to forum sig links think of it like this. Chances are the harder a link is to get the more value it will be seen as having. Consequently the easier a link is to get the less value it likely has. That's obviously very general, but I think it holds most of the time.

If you consider the perspective of a search engine that a link is a vote or recommendation for another page or site how valuable is a sig link. How much of a recommendation is it really?

Also if you want to outrank your competition you need to do things they're not doing or will have difficulty replicating. It's easy to get sig links. If you're main source of links is forum signatures how hard would that be for your competition to duplicate? Not hard at all. So even if you have 100,000 sig links your competition can easily get those same 100,000 links + another 10,000 and outrank you. Look for links your competition either can't get or will have difficulty getting. Those links will be much more valuable.

okay, but the links you are suggesting... the ones that are more difficult to come by, are you saying that I should look for a link from the Chicago Tribune to my site vs. me just throwing up signature links? Is that the kind of valuable link that you are describing?
That's what I got out of what you said...
Hope I'm on the right page???

That's basically what I meant. It wouldn't just be the Chicago Tribune, but given your site is going to cover news any mainstream media site that has some authority would be great.

Those might be ideal links, but it doesn't mean you can't have other links. Another blogger who covers the news and has a site that's similar to your would be good ot get a link from.

A simple way to think of it is if a person visiting that other site were to see a link to a page on your site might they click on it to visit you. If the answer is yes then it's a good link to have.

There's a lot more to it of course. I wrote a post awhile back on some of the signs a quality link might have, which has a little more detail.

Well it looks like Google has spidered your page recently and the problem has been fixed.

Thanks. I have learned a lot from this one thread than researching this same concern somewhere!