What Are Meta Descriptions and How to Write Them
By Miriam Ellis, edited by Emilie Martin, July 9, 2024.
What is a meta description?
A meta description is an HTML element that provides a brief summary of a webpage. A page’s meta description tag is displayed as part of the search snippet in a search engine results page (SERP) and is meant to give the user an idea of the content that exists within the page and how it relates to their search query. In some cases, Google may rewrite your meta descriptions for display in their SERPs to better match their perception of a searcher’s intent.
What is the optimal meta description length?
Some people like to describe meta description length in terms of character count and others prefer to think of it in terms of screen pixels. Technically, a meta description can be any length you want, but the reason site owners give consideration to this particular FAQ is because search engines will truncate meta descriptions to tailor the layout of their SERPs to fit the device being used by a searcher.
For example, a mobile phone user might sometimes see a meta description of a different length than a laptop user will. Here’s an example of Google showing an ellipsis (...) where it is truncating a SERP entry’s meta description after the word “see”:
While best practices surrounding meta descriptions continue to evolve along with the SERPs as time goes by, current recommendations are that you keep your meta descriptions somewhere between 50 — 160 characters (including spaces between words) or to 680 pixels.
There are a number of free meta description preview tools like the one pictured above from To the Web, which emulate what your mobile and desktop SERP result might look like based on the meta description you provide. These can be useful to play around with, but it’s important to know that these types of tools are not always perfectly accurate.
For example, if you compare the above screenshot to the one shown earlier, you will see that Google is actually truncating the live result to a shorter length than the one being displayed by the emulator. The most accurate way to understand how Google is handling your meta descriptions is to look at your own results in the SERPs across a variety of devices.
Meta description examples
Let’s begin by answering the top technical questions about meta descriptions:
What does a meta description look like in HTML code?
Here is an example of how a meta description is written with HTML. The meta name field contains the word “description,” and the content field contains the actual description you are writing for the page in question, which you hope will appear in the search engine results as part of your entry there.
<head>
<meta name="description" content="This is an example of a
meta description. This will often show up in search results.">
</head>
Where is the meta description located?
If you are working directly with the raw code of your website, you can find your page’s meta description within the <head> section of the page’s HTML markup, typically below the <title> element:
If, instead, you are using a content management system (CMS) or website builder to create your site, your product will typically have blank fields for you to fill in the text of your chosen meta description for each page, like this:
How do meta descriptions look in Google’s SERPs?
The meta description appears as part of your SERP snippet, just below the page’s link and clickable title tag. In this example, the words after the date are what Google is showing as a meta description tag for this nature website in Scotland:
Where else are meta descriptions displayed?
Links shared on social media will also often pull the meta description as part of the linked-to content, as in the below example of a tweet where the text starting “The lumberjack-hydrologists” is being brought in from the metadata of this news article.
Many SEO tools will also surface the meta description of pages for the purposes of grading, improvement, analysis, and competitive research.
Now that we’ve answered the top technical questions about meta descriptions, let’s get to the fun part: understanding why these elements matter to the marketing of your organization!
Why are meta descriptions important for SEO?
Do meta descriptions affect search rankings?
In the early days of search, some SEOs believed that meta descriptions had a direct impact on search engine rankings. However, as long ago as 2009, Google announced that neither meta descriptions nor meta keywords factor into their ranking algorithms. It’s good to have an official statement on this once-controversial topic, but Google’s answer doesn’t quite convey the full picture of the role meta descriptions might play in rankings.
The ideal purpose of most meta descriptions is to persuade searchers to click through from the results to your page. Because many SEOs strongly believe click-through rates (CTR) may positively impact a page’s ability to rank well in Google’s SERPs, meta descriptions may well be thought of as having an indirect impact on rank.
You need to know that even this concept of CTR impacting rank has had its own historical controversy. Search Engine Land has compiled a massive document of every major statement Google and its reps have ever made about CTR. However, since the 2024 Google API leaks, it has become clear that clicks inform Google’s concept of site quality, and thus, clicks may be viewed as a ranking factor. The degree of their influence is a matter for further study, but the main thing to keep in mind is that there is zero controversy over whether meta descriptions influence click-through rates to your website, and this matters a ton to your organization!
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How do meta descriptions affect CTR?
This question brings us to the most practical usage of the meta description element. For a moment, imagine that you are a searcher rather than a site owner. SERPs like Google’s are really just a list of options, and you have to choose what you want to click on.
Let’s say you’re hoping to improve your garden’s ecosystem at home by planting native wildflowers, and you’re turning to the internet for help. Which of these two entries meets your needs?
Is it the first result, providing a list of wildflowers, as the meta description indicates? Or is it the second result, offering to sell you wildflower seeds, as indicated by the meta description? When the title tag element doesn’t offer quite enough context, the meta description offers more screen space to describe what the searcher can expect to find on the page if they click through.
And that’s the beauty of the meta description tag in a nutshell: if it matches the intent of the searcher, it can persuade them to click through to your site.
If only the dynamic were always as simple as that, this would be the end of this article. But we’re not quite there yet because Google often doesn’t leave it up to you site owners to decide what appears in this influential element of the search engine results. Read on!
Why won’t Google use my meta descriptions?
In 2020, a large-scale study by Portent found that:
Google rewrites the meta descriptions for 71% of first-page SERP entries in mobile results
Google rewrites the meta descriptions for 68% of first-page SERP entries in desktop results
In other words, if you’ve succeeded at working your way to top visibility in Google’s results, you have only about a 30% chance of the meta descriptions you’ve crafted actually being displayed by the search engine. Questions immediately start bubbling to the surface as soon as site owners first encounter this information. We’ll answer the two biggest FAQs now.
1. Why does Google rewrite meta descriptions?
Google’s John Mueller provided a variety of cases in which Google might rewrite meta descriptions, including:
The page has an empty meta description field.
The meta description field doesn’t instill trust in Google because it contains something like a string of keywords that Google feels won’t be useful to searchers.
The contents of a page include information about multiple topics (keywords), and Google is trying to match the meta description to a searcher’s search phrase by pulling some of that language off the page instead of using what’s been written in the meta description field. We can see an example of this here if we search for the phrase “beavers return to Scotland” and check out the meta description:
If we use Moz’s Pro’s On-Page Grader tool (get a 30-day free trial here), we can see that the actual meta description of this page is quite different than what Google is displaying:
Instead of displaying what the site owner has written, Google’s internal logic tells it that my query language will be better satisfied if they pull this text from the page in question:
It’s not always easy to understand Google’s logic in these choices, and it can definitely be frustrating for site owners when they see the meta descriptions they’ve worked hard to write being replaced by something Google thinks is “better.” But, as always, site owners have to remember that Google’s SERPs belong to Google and they can apply whatever rules they think make sense. The scenario definitely brings up further questions, like…
2. Should I bother to write meta descriptions if Google is just going to overwrite them?
Because Google will generate a meta description for pages that lack one, some site owners now simply leave this field blank in their code or their CMS. If your organization is overwhelmed with work right now and you are having to wisely budget every minute of your day, you could choose to go this route in favor of prioritizing other SEO and marketing tasks, but it’s not ideal, and it could overlook opportunities. Considering that:
The meta description is a way to help Google understand the contents of your page
Your custom meta descriptions will display to searchers some of the time
Meta descriptions have so much power to influence CTR to your website
Your meta descriptions will often display when you link to your content from your social profiles
…yes, you should still make it a best practice to write a custom meta description for all of the important pages of your website. And, you can take comfort from knowing that Google’s habit of fetching actual text from your pages much of the time to re-write this field to better match searchers’ queries isn’t always a bad thing. It could actually improve your CTR some of the time.
So now, with everything you’ve learned so far about meta descriptions, your big question will be…
How do you write a good meta description?
Practices you should try to avoid in your meta descriptions include:
Don’t just put a string of keywords in them.
Don’t write about something other than what is present in the contents of the page.
Don’t clutter them with spammy-looking claims like “best in the world!!!!!!!!” that could make your organization look untrustworthy or unprofessional to searchers.
Don’t make them too short — it looks empty and unfinished in the SERPs.
Don’t forget to check how they actually look in the SERPs in case Google’s truncation is resulting in a strange-looking phrasing. For example, a meta description that is too long might result in a statement like “We provide fraud” instead of “We provide fraud protection services.”
Happily, Google has official documentation regarding what they consider to be a good meta description. Here's a summary of their recommendations:
- Do write a unique meta description for every page
- Do be sure your description accurately summarizes the page's contents
If you are generating a large volume of descriptions at scale, be sure they are human-readable and diverse instead of robotic-sounding or duplicative; this last tidbit is particularly relevant to site owners who are currently experimenting with the option of using AI to generate metadata at scale, and in such scenarios, it should be added that all AI-generated text should be carefully fact-checked for hallucinations and other errors.
Google’s documentation provides a variety of bad/better meta description examples, and we’ll screenshot one of those here:
Google’s examples make it clear that the meta description is, in fact, a marketing element with a strong potential to influence searchers. Some SEOs like to describe it as a place to feature your elevator pitch for the page, encapsulating in just a few well-chosen words why a searcher should click through. Given this, ask yourself the following questions to help you write the best possible meta descriptions:
What is appearing in my competitors’ meta descriptions for the search phrases I’m focusing on, and how can I stand out?
How much am I investing in understanding the intent and needs of the public I want to serve, and are those elements reflected in my descriptions?
What is the unique value proposition (UVP) of my page?
How can I describe my UVP in the fewest but most impactful words?
Does my meta description incorporate E-E-A-T principles, giving searchers strong reasons to click through because, for example, my page features first-hand experience, recognized expertise, content written by an accredited authority on the subject, or particular elements that instill trust?
Would I rather have someone click through to my site, phone me, or drive to me right from the SERPs because I’ve included my phone number or address in the meta description? This goes for hours of operation, too, and the decision should be based on your goals.
Is there an opportunity to engage emotions or attention with my meta description so that searchers feel a desire to click through for more information?
If I am updating an existing page to reflect new information, have I checked my meta description to see if it needs to be rewritten to reflect the revised content?
This eighth point brings us to the last thing you need to take into account regarding the meta-description element.
Meta description quality control over time
The truth about websites is that they can get messy over time without tending, and as they grow to encompass a large number of pages, elements like meta description tags can become overlooked or outdated. Because of this reality, it’s important to have a workflow in place to regularly audit your whole site to discover issues that have cropped up as the years go by and your organization and published assets grow.
Use of a product like Moz Pro Site Crawl (get your free 30-day trial here) will help you find and fix low-quality or broken meta descriptions across your website. The frequency with which you perform such a crawl should be based on the rate at which your website is growing. The more pages you publish, the more proactive you need to be about maintaining site quality so that both search engines and searchers are having a clear, usable experience with your brand that drives clicks and conversions for your organization.
Easily find and fix missing meta descriptions
Moz Pro's Site Crawl feature identifies pages with poor or missing meta descriptions so you can fix them fast. Take a 30-day free trial on us and see what you can achieve:
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