Meta Description

An HTML meta tag providing a 150–160 character summary of a page that may appear as the snippet in search results.

The meta description is not a direct ranking factor but is critical for click-through rate (CTR). When Google uses your meta description as the snippet (rather than pulling text from the page), a well-written description with a clear value proposition and call-to-action can significantly increase clicks from search results.

Best practices: write 140–160 characters (≈920px wide), include the primary keyword naturally (Google bolds matching terms in the snippet), write a compelling sentence that accurately describes the page, and create unique descriptions for every page — not duplicate or auto-generated descriptions.

Google ignores the meta description and pulls its own snippet in roughly 60–70% of cases (according to Portent and Ahrefs studies). This happens when Google believes a passage from the page body better matches the user's specific query. Despite this, writing good meta descriptions is still worthwhile because Google uses them when the query is more generic and they influence social sharing previews.