When asked to Google’s John Mueller whether the Meta Description tag matters for Ranking,
he talked about the influence of the Meta tags.
We all know that Google advises using meta descriptions that are unique and creative on the web pages. So we can say there is a certain influence of Meta description on the viewers, but does it contribute to Ranking? Let’s see what John Mueller has to say.
The Snippets notes documentation of meta description helps in generating search results snippets.
Google’s Recommendations On Meta Descriptions
If the meta description is unique and appealing enough, it will play an essential role in attracting the website visitors and give them an idea of what they can expect from the page if they click the website link.
There is no defined limit on how long a meta description can be; however, Google can choose to show how much they want to. The limit depends on the user’s browser device.
Are Meta Descriptions used for ranking?
The question was explicitly aimed at knowing if we can add location name information to the meta description and whether it will help rank.
John Mueller answered the question very briefly, covering the ‘location name’ topic and generalizing if anything added in the meta description can help in the ranking? Here’s what happened.
This is the question asked:
“Does adding the location name in the meta description matter to Google in terms of ranking if the content quality is maintained?”
John Mueller answered:
“So the meta description is primarily used as a snippet in the search results page.
And that’s not something that we would use for ranking.
But obviously, having a good snippet on a search results page, that can make it more interesting for people to actually visit your page when they see your page ranking in the search results.”
Conclusion: Write meta descriptions to help people decide whether to click the link on Google search engine result pages—and not to game the algorithms.
