Meta description

The meta description is the short piece of text you add to a page's HTML to summarise what that page is about. Visitors don't see it on the page itself, but search engines can show it below the title in the search results. So it is a kind of shop-window text: in a few sentences, you persuade someone to click on your result rather than another.

Google states that the meta description is not a ranking factor. So a good description won't push you higher in the results. It can, however, determine whether people click, and that makes it important all the same.

What makes a good meta description?

A strong meta description is concrete, honest and tailored to what the searcher wants. A few rules of thumb:

• Keep it short enough not to be cut off. Google truncates based on pixel width, so aim for roughly 150 to 160 characters.
• Summarise what the visitor will find on the page, in plain language.
• Use the main keyword naturally. Google sometimes shows words that match the search in bold.
• Give a reason to click: a benefit, a practical detail or a clear next step.
• Write unique text for every page.

An example

A bakery in Manchester has a page about made-to-order cakes. A weak meta description would be: "Welcome to our website. We are a bakery." A better version: "Custom birthday and celebration cakes, baked in our Manchester kitchen. Order at least three days ahead and collect in store." That says what you get, where and how it works. Anyone looking for a cake for a party knows straight away they are in the right place.

Why Google sometimes ignores your text

Google regularly rewrites meta descriptions. If the search engine thinks another piece of text from your page fits a particular search better, it shows that instead. That isn't an error. It happens more often when your description is vague, doesn't match the content or is identical across several pages. A clear, specific text is probably used more often.

Together with the meta title, the meta description forms the first impression in the search results. Both therefore affect your CTR, the percentage of people who click after seeing your result.

The meta description in a world of AI answers

In Google AI Overviews or in answers from ChatGPT and Perplexity, your meta description usually isn't shown word for word. Those systems mainly take their information from the content of the page itself. Even so, the meta description remains useful: it summarises your page and helps in the classic results, which continue to exist alongside AI answers. Especially with zero-click searches, every click you can still win counts. Beyond that, invest above all in clear content with well-defined headings, so AI systems also quickly understand what your page is about.

Finding missing or duplicate descriptions

On a larger website, pages without a description or with the same text easily creep in. A technical SEO analysis of your pages tracks down such cases automatically, so you can make targeted improvements.