The Importance of Meta Description?

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18
Hey guys,

I have a question about meta description tags. I've always used them when optimising my site and always thought they were important for Google to realise how relevant your site is to a given keyword. This would usually be the snippet that shows up in the SERPs

However recently, I've noticed that the snippet in the SERPs is different depending on the keyword that you use. It is showing the same page and same URL, but sometimes the snippet is taken from the meta description, and sometimes it is taken directly from text on the page.

My question is - do Google use the meta description tag to determine where you rank, or do they just pick a snippet that they feel would be more relevant to the user?

Thanks for any help,
Alex
#search engine optimization #description #importance #meta
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    • [4] replies
    • Thanks, but sometimes Google don't take the SERP snippet from the meta description tag. Sometimes it is taken directly from text on the page.

      So do we really need a meta description, and how important is it really as a ranking factor?

      Moz said that it's not directly used as a ranking factor but helps in CTR, which is.
    • Hi
      What should be key word :
      Domain Name Related?
      Site Related?
    • Meta descriptions are HTML attributes that provide concise explanations of the contents of web pages. Meta descriptions are commonly used on search engine result pages form the SERPs to display preview snippets for a given page.
    • Many People are correct here Google now will only take on page seo in consideration now, Along with MOZ and a few others which fell in toe... BUT if you check out the People like BING & Yahoo, they still use all of the Meta Tags & descriptions..

      I recently test a couple of sites & without the Meta Tags Bing & Yahoo just did not recoginse the page and if you try to add it manually Bing infact tells you so....

      I wouldnt want to miss out on any potential Visitors would you ??

      Thanks
  • What Is Meta Description : Meta descriptions are HTML attributes that provide concise explanations of the contents of web pages. Meta descriptions are commonly used on search engine result pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a given page.


    #alex - Yeh !! Google use meta description with the content & Backlinks Quality + Quantity. Nowadays, UI(User Interface) Had also become important part of SEO.
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  • What is a Meta Description?

    Meta description tags, while not important to search engine rankings, are extremely important in gaining user click-through from SERPs. These short paragraphs are a webmasters opportunity to advertise content to searchers and to let them know exactly whether the given page contains the information they're looking for.

    The meta description should employ the keywords intelligently, but also create a compelling description that a searcher will want to click. Direct relevance to the page and uniqueness between each pages meta description is key. The description should optimally be between 150-160 characters.
  • Do we have to use meta description as keywords seperated with commos or we have to write a description text ? what is the best ?
  • The meta descriptions (or"snippets") are generated automatically and Google takes both content of a page as well as references to it that appear on the web. Google aims to represent the title and description in the best way to describe how each result is relevant to the user's query.
    It may use different sources for this information, including the information in the title and meta tags for each page, or publicly available information, anchor text or listings from the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) or create rich snippets based on markup on the page.
  • Ya brother meta tag, will definitely play an important role as they refers what your website belongs to and which keyword you are working
  • Populating the meta descriptions for your web pages provides the best chance of search engines displaying the snippet of text you require below your listing in the search result – descriptive and well written meta descriptions are more likely to be displayed, and this has been proven to lead to significantly improved click through rates.
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  • You as the site's owner and publisher knows what your site is about, but the internet world doesn't. That's where the meta data and title comes into play. Seo is for a reason, not to make people's lives miserable
    Think about the indexing process and why that is.
  • "My question is - do Google use the meta description tag to determine where you rank, or do they just pick a snippet that they feel would be more relevant to the user? "

    The answer is Google uses the meta description to analyze your site ( or better that particular page). But it only shows what it thinks to be releant.
  • I am note sure how useful the meta description is considering most blogs and site that i go to tend to have a paragraph from thier post in their meta description. Mind you they are at the top of the ranking. But then again, if you are new and still trying to increase your ranking then it might be useful.
    • [1] reply
    • I noticed this as well. It doesn't count as duplicate content, right?
  • An interesting question.

    Well, They are still important for your SEO.

    However Google has started showing the most relevant description picking up from your page content. This depends on user query.

    But the thing is, many times our page doesn't contain the important keywords or sentences all together. In such cases Google will just pick a few words while the others doesn't gets shown. So to help up with this, it's always good to write meaningful meta that contains keywords and sentences that the user may tend to search.

    Hope it helps.
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  • Meta descriptions are still relevant, however, (and I agree to the comments above), Google now chooses which snippet to display on the SERPs- information, which they see relevant for the audience. It is safe to always create your meta description based on what the page is about.
  • Hi,

    The meta description is a 160 character snippet, a tag in HTML, that summarizes a page's content. Search engines show the meta description in search results mostly when the searched for phrase is contained in the description. Optimizing the meta description is a very important aspect of on-page SEO.
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    The Importance of Meta Description?

    Hey guys, I have a question about meta description tags. I've always used them when optimising my site and always thought they were important for Google to realise how relevant your site is to a given keyword. This would usually be the snippet that shows up in the SERPs