Meta Description
A page's summary tag. Not a ranking factor, but it often becomes the search snippet, so it drives click-through.
The meta description is an HTML tag that summarizes a page's content in a sentence or two. Search engines frequently use it as the snippet shown beneath the title in results, though they'll rewrite it with text pulled from the page when they think that better matches the query.
It is not a direct ranking factor — you won't rank higher for stuffing keywords into it. What it does influence is click-through rate: a clear, specific, benefit-led description written for a human reader earns more clicks than a generic or truncated one. Aim for roughly 150-160 characters so it isn't cut off, and make each page's description genuinely unique.
Duplicate meta descriptions across many URLs are a classic thin-content tell and are flagged in Search Console. Every indexable page should have its own, written to match what that specific page delivers.
Related terms
- AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) — Structuring content so answer engines can lift a direct answer from it — for featured snippets, voice results and AI answers.
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization) — The practice of earning more relevant traffic from search engines by making a site easier to crawl, index, understand and trust.
- Structured Data (Schema Markup) — Machine-readable markup (usually JSON-LD) that labels page content so engines can understand it and show rich results.
- Title Tag — A page's <title>, shown as the clickable result headline. One of the strongest on-page relevance signals — keep it unique.