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Is Google doing away with use of the meta description?

 
 

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Abstract Abstract

Question: “Is Google doing away with use of the meta description?”

Answer: No. Google uses the meta description tag if they think it is more helpful to the user than a snippet from the site. They are using it more often now than seven or eight years ago.
0:00
We have a good question from Quentin in Vancouver, who asks: “In the search results, Google will often display a snippet appropriate to the specific search query – often disregarding the meta description. Is Google doing away with meta description use like they did for meta keywords?”

0:36
So, in fact, it's moving the other direction. We started out as only having stuff from within the page and now we're a little more likely to sometimes use the meta description. But we don't use it all the time. If we think it's useful for the query, don't make the same meta description on every single page, just as a cookie cutter because then we sort of think: “Well, that's not a very useful meta description”.

0:56
So, it's not that we're doing away with the meta description. We use it more now, that we did say seven or eight years ago. But, at the same time, we think it has to be useful before we'll use the meta description.

1:08
So the best thing that you can do is make a really useful meta description and then you're more likely to see that, instead of the snippet from the page. Now, if you don't want to bother, that's completely fine, too. We'll just try to do whatever we think is the smartest and the best for users and hopefully users will click through and find your content.