Meta Description: Your Sales Pitch on Google
A meta description is the ~155-character sales pitch for your webpage in search results. It's your chance to convince a user to click your link over others. The footgun: Google may ignore it and show a different snippet if it better matches the query.
WHY IT EXISTS: Search engines need a way to show users a preview of a page's content before they click. A meta description gives site owners a direct way to communicate that summary, aiming to attract relevant clicks from the search results page and improve click-through rate (CTR).
THE MENTAL MODEL: A meta description is the ad copy for your organic search result. The title link is the headline, and the description is the body copy that has one job: convince the user that this page has the best answer to their query. It does not directly influence your ranking, but a compelling description increases clicks, which is a positive signal to search engines.
HOW IT WORKS: You add a tag to the <head> section of your page's HTML: <meta name="description" content="Your compelling, unique summary goes here.">. Google's crawlers read this content when they index the page. When a user's search is broad enough, Google may use this description as the text snippet shown below your title link in the search results. The optimal length is typically between 150-160 characters; any longer and it will likely be truncated.
WHEN TO USE IT: Write a unique, compelling meta description for every important, high-traffic page on your site. This is especially critical for your homepage, category pages, product pages, and key articles where you want to control the messaging and maximize your click-through rate.
WHEN NOT TO USE IT: Don't bother writing them for pages with very low strategic value. For some pages that target many long-tail keywords, like a large forum or a massive product database, it can be better to omit the meta description. In these cases, allowing Google to dynamically create a snippet by pulling text from the page content that directly matches the user's specific query can be more effective.
ONE CANONICAL EXAMPLE: A user searches for "how to fix a leaky faucet." A page with the meta description "Don't call a plumber yet! Our step-by-step guide with pictures shows you how to fix a leaky compression faucet in 15 minutes with basic tools." is far more likely to get the click than a generic or auto-generated snippet.
Read the original → developers.google.com
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