A snippet – the summary information about a webpage, included with an organic link – in a search engine results page (SERP) is a business’s first impression for many potential customers. Part of an SEO’s job is to do their best to ensure that first glance is enticing, which means doing what we can to bring that snippet to life. Following best practices is the first step, but what happens when your snippet is wrong or just plain missing? Keep reading for tips on troubleshooting the SEO snippet issues the ROI Revolution SEO team sees most often.
What is a Snippet in SEO?
Let’s look at a snippet on a Google results page. The most basic version consists of a favicon, clickable page title, URL, and a meta description. Sometimes, it will also include rich results and site links. Below is an example of what ROI Revolution’s snippet looks like when queried in Google.

The favicon is our official logo. The URL is our website’s homepage, and the page title is the name and tagline of our company. Our meta description is showing mostly as written, although in this case, Google truncated it by one word and added an ellipsis. We happily received five site links in addition to the basic information; sitelinks cannot be manually added to search results by website owners, these are generated at Google’s discretion.
This is an example of things going the way we want them to in the SERPs. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work like that. Here are some common questions we receive about snippet issues and our quick answers:
Q: Why is my Google favicon not showing next to my SERP listing?
A: Check to see if your favicon is outside Google’s favicon size guidelines. Favicons must be square (1:1 aspect ratio) at a minimum size of 8x8px, but sizes larger than 48x48px are recommended. Next, check that you’re uploading your logo in a supported image file type – PNG is the most widely supported – and ensure that the file is not accidentally blocked for crawling.
If the pixel size and file type are correct, it’s possible that Google is not showing it for reasons only known to Google. Over the last year, there were periods when Google had a bug causing favicons to disappear from the SERPs. And sometimes, according to the company, it just doesn’t show favicons for bandwidth or other reasons.
Q: Why is that logo showing?
A: If the wrong logo is displaying in the snippet, check your website images. Google pulls the logo from somewhere on your site. The easiest way to find it is to do an image search on Google using the query “[brand name] logo.” When you find the logo in question, click on it to view its URL. Then, you can use that information to locate it in your site’s files and remove it.
Q: Why does my meta description say that?
A: If unwanted text appears in the meta description, there are three possible answers. First, check to make sure an SEO meta description has been written and coded into the page’s metadata. If it’s not there, the fix is easy: just write one!
Second, Google may be rewriting your meta description because it thinks its version is a better answer to the query than yours. Of course, Google isn’t always right and occasionally it pulls random copy from somewhere on the page as its source. If you think this may be the case, review your meta description to ensure that the copy is an accurate description of what the user will encounter on the page.
Third, if you’re consistently seeing that the same random copy is appearing as a meta description for unrelated queries, you can use the data-nosnippet tag, as explained in Google’s developer documentation, to direct Google not to use copy from that section of the page. While we can’t guarantee Google will start showing your written meta description, that HTML attribute should at least force Google to show something else.
Q: Why isn’t my site showing up in Google search results at all?
A: There are three common answers to this question, too. First, check your robots.txt file and make sure someone didn’t accidentally noindex the site. A noindex directive in that file tells Google not to show your website in search results.
Second, check Google Search Console (GSC) for a manual action notification. Websites hit with manual action penalties are removed from search results until they fix whatever issue Google is penalizing them for. Manual actions are pretty rare, but if your site violates Google’s spam policies, it’s a possible reason for dropping out of the SERPs.
Finally, you may have a lot of SEO work to do. Google is looking for websites that are technically sound and full of helpful content. If your site isn’t up to par, it will be difficult to compete in SERPs. Contact us to speak with our SEO experts if you think this is the case.
Looking for more on SEO Snippet Issues?
While these scenarios don’t cover every possible SEO snippet issue, they should help you get started with troubleshooting. ROI Revolution’s experienced SEO team also provides answers to frequently asked questions in our monthly SEO Newsletter. Be sure to keep up with those on the ROI Revolution blog.