: Is leaving meta description tag empty beneficial? Recently I have been searching for different things in google search engine, bower save flag manage bower cache The first results for

@Heady270

Google almost always chooses a description to use in the search results that contains the search terms. If you meta description doesn't contain at least some of the words that the user searched for, Google isn't going to choose it in that case.

Leaving the meta description blank (or omitting it) will cause Google to choose a sentence from the body of the page all the time. Google will use the meta description when you have written one and it matches the search query.

There are some big advantages to having your meta description used in the search results. That is your one chance to convince the user to click on your site as opposed to the other sites in the search results. Crafting a custom message for search users can dramatically change the click through rate (CTR) from the search results to your site. A good meta description will:


Use keywords users most often search for to pull up the page
Contain a "hook". A hook is something about your content that could make it attractive. It often contains a stat or number. Some examples:


A stat about the number of items available: "4,300 blue widgets to choose from"
How fresh you content is: "3 new reviews" or "Updated 2017"
How many people use it: "95 bookings this month"

Contains a call to action (CTA). The CTA lets people know what they are expected to on your site. This both lets users know that they can do the action and makes the visitors you do get more likely to be the ones that are interested your offering. Examples:


"Buy a blue widget"
"Book your blue widget"
"Open a blue widget account"
"Sign up for the blue widget newsletter"



Leaving the meta description blank leaves out the possibility of this opportunity.

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@Pope3001725

From: moz.com/learn/seo/meta-description

Not a Google Ranking Factor

Google announced in September of 2009 that neither meta descriptions nor meta keywords factor into Google's ranking algorithms for web search. Google uses meta descriptions to return results when searchers use advanced search operators to match meta tag content, as well as to pull preview snippets on search result pages, but it's important to note that meta descriptions do not to influence Google's ranking algorithms for normal web search.


Also AFAIK meta tag keywords was also "deprecated" by google, because there is a lot of bad practices around it.

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@Holmes151

Google customises the description that appears in the SERPs based on what you search for, regardless of whether you've included the meta description in the page source or not.

If the content of the page is dynamic and changes often then it maybe difficult to create a suitable meta description so it is probably best omitted in this case. Otherwise, the meta description can provide a helpful default and Google isn't the only service that may (or may not) use it.

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