Google has recently turned its eyes to communicating better with Webmasters - it seems that Google appreciates the need to keep both Google customers and search content providers happy.
One of those quirks of Google which often irked both of those two camps was what it sometimes chose to display in SERPs (or Search Engine Results Pages).
In its infancy, where Google encountered Websites where Webmasters had failed to supply a Page Title or Meta Description tags, it instead turned to an authority, in particular the human edited Open Directory Project, also known as ODP or DMOZ.
This worked well. However, in recent years the back log of outdated or unfocused ODP entries has negatively effected some websites to a considerable degree, especially in terms of natural search click throughs.
ODP can be slow to react to change requests, and site owners where struggling to keep their entries up to date.
The NOODP metatag allows webmasters to more fully control how Google draws page descriptions from ODP. Over to Google's Vanessa Fox :
"The way we generate the descriptions (snippets) that appear under a page in the search results is completely automated. The process uses both the content on a page as well as references to it that appear on other sites.
One source we use to generate snippets is the Open Directory Project, or ODP. Some site owners want to be to able to request not using the ODP for generating snippets, and we're happy to let you all know we've added support for this. All you have to do is add a meta tag to your pages."
To direct all search engines that support the meta tag not to use ODP information for the page's description, use the following:
META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP"
"Note that not all search engines may support this meta tag, so check with each for more information.
To direct Google specifically from using this information to describe a page, use the following:
META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOODP"
It's certainly a move in a very positive direction, giving webmasters much more direct control over how Google represents them and their site.
