Google Answers When Meta Descriptions Affect Rankings

Google’s John Mueller answered the question whether meta descriptions can be used to influence search rankings.

This is a good question, as Google encourages web pages to use their own meta description. There is some impact, but is that impact related to rankings? John Mueller answers that question.

meta element

Meta tags are formally known as meta elements. The meta element is used to describe (represent) document-level information about a web page.

To describe various properties of a web page, meta elements (like all HTML elements) have attributes that extend meta elements to allow specific kinds of information to be sent to web browsers or web crawlers (such as Googlebot). can be provided to ).

for example:

• The meta robot tag communicates with the crawler.
• The meta refresh tag communicates with the browser.

There are many other meta tags that interact directly with search engines and browsers.

• meta name=”viewport”
• meta http-equiv=”update”
• Meta name = “Verify Google Sites”
• meta name=”googlebot” content=”no translation”

Meta element data is information that is not intended to be seen directly by site visitors (but can be seen indirectly via search results).

meta description

The W3C is the standards body responsible for (among other things) defining HTML.

The official W3C specification for meta description tags states that meta descriptions are designed for use by search engines.

“The value should be a free-form string describing the page. The value should be suitable for use in a directory of pages (such as a search engine).
There should not be more than one meta element per document with the name attribute set to the value description . ”

Google recommendations for meta descriptions

Google’s documentation on snippets states that meta descriptions are used to generate snippets for search results.

When used properly, meta descriptions displayed in search results tell potential website visitors what the page is about and what they should do if they click on a link and visit the website. Shows what to expect.

There is no limit to the length of your meta description.

However, there is a limit to the amount of meta descriptions that search engines will choose to display. Limits are defined by how much can be displayed on a user’s browser device.

Google’s SEO Starter Guide explains meta descriptions in detail.

“A page’s meta description tag gives Google and other search engines an overview of the page.

A page’s title can be a few words or phrases, while a page’s meta description tag can be a sentence or two or a short paragraph.