I am writing articles about different HTML tags. Currently, my description tag looks like this:

Read about the HTML5 Tag.

but it should actually be:

Read about the HTML5 <iframe> Tag.

This is the content of my tag:

<meta name="description" content="Read about the HTML5 &lt;iframe&gt; Tag.">

Directly writing <iframe> will mess up the actual webpage. Is there anything that I can do to properly show the tag?

I have one more question, my title tag for different webpages goes like this:

HTML5 <iframe> Tag - Etc. Etc. Etc.

However, in the search results, google also adds my domain name at the end of the title even though it is not in the title tag. In search results, i get the following title:

HTML5 <iframe> Tag - Etc. Etc. Etc. - MyDomain.

The - MyDomain part is extra and should not be there.

  • Google is not going to insert an HTML tag into their SERPs. You need to drop the angle brackets. As far as your title tag, it is very likely too short. Make the title tag at least 45 characters and more optimally 55-60 characters. – closetnoc Mar 9 '17 at 3:56
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    Thanks, @closetnoc but google results for HTML iframe tag actually show the tags in SERPs. Just to be clear, I am not trying to insert any tags directly like <iframe>. I am trying to show them in the search results by typing them like &lt;iframe&gt;. :) – Neena Vivek Mar 9 '17 at 7:50
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    I do realize that Google can encode the results page, I was just not sure how wise it was to chase a rabbit down a hole. Google matches the text and angle brackets will not add value from what I can see. There are far too many SERP results without angle brackets. It just may be that the angle brackets will not be picked up from the meta tag. That is what I was trying to suggest. Albeit not elegantly. Cheers!! – closetnoc Mar 9 '17 at 15:48

... meta description tag in google

To be clear, the description that appears in the SERPs in just that, a "description", it's not "the meta description tag". Google will show the contents of the meta description in the SERPs if it closely matches what the user is searching for, or there is no other text on the page. However, Google will often dynamically generate the description that appears in the SERPs from whatever the user is searching for and the textual content on the page.

In fact, pages will often omit the meta description entirely these days since Google does a good (if not better) job of dynamically generating a description. And sometimes it's not easy for the author of the page to create a suitable meta description anyway. (It also doesn't affect ranking, just takes up a few extra bytes and takes time to maintain.)


You may just be unlucky. Google will certainly show text like <html-tag> in the SERPs. You just need to do a search for iframe to see this. However, none of these pages appear to use the text &lt;iframe&gt; in the meta description. In fact, some of these pages don't have a meta description tag (see above). Google is generating this description from the page text.

google also adds my domain name at the end of the title

It has often been suggested that this happens when your title tag is too short (eg. below the 55 char "optimum"), as closetnoc suggests in comments. This might well be part of it, however, this is certainly not the complete answer by any means, as there are plenty of short titles returned in the SERPs that don't have the domain appended to the end.

For example, currently, if I search for hello on Google I get the following page titles returned:

  1. Hello Magazine (14 chars)
  2. Adele - Hello - YouTube (23 chars)
  3. HELLO! | Facebook (17 chars)
  4. hello network (13 chars)
  5. Hello (5 chars)
  6. About - Hello (13 chars)

From that example it's difficult to see how the length of the title has anything to do with it?

  • Regarding shorter title tags, this is something new(ish) - at least new to me. I am looking for a pattern to see why some short title tags are accepted and others are obviously not. The branded title tags I get, not a big deal, however, the others make me rather curious. At first I found some title tag matching og:title, however, some cases do not so that is off the table. I will poke around more later. I am all about managing title tags and I want to be right and helpful to OPs even when I get rather curt. ;-) I try not to be. If you have any ideas, please share. Cheers!! – closetnoc Mar 9 '17 at 16:50
  • Silly me! I have been warming up the tubes with some coffee and I realized that this is part of the query process. Being such a simple search query, it is possible that the short title tags will show-up. Matching against the title tag is a powerful metric and the search filters may have conditions that allow short title tags to show for simpler searches. Searching against the content may have different results. I will poke around later. I actually have to do some work on tenant screening and take Mom to the doctors which is really often these days. Cheers!! – closetnoc Mar 9 '17 at 17:43

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