Google May Never Display Your Meta Description

But there’s more: even if you take the time to craft the most descriptive, compelling meta in 160
characters or less, Google may not even show it to searchers. More than half the time (62.78%
of the time, according to the Ahrefs study linked above), Google will use its indexed memory of
a page to automatically generate its own original meta description, usually to better match a
searcher’s exact query and highlight occurrence of keywords in the actual page, as opposed to
the description you wrote for the page.

Meta Descriptions Are Not a Google Ranking Factor

Lest we forget, it is worth reiterating that regardless of whether Google displays what you wrote
or not, meta descriptions are not a ranking factor. Your use of keywords, calls to action, or other
clever on-page optimization techniques in the meta description are not going to change Google’s
interpretation or algorithmic assessment of the value of your page. In fact, according to that same
Ahrefs review, more than a quarter of the top-ranking results across the web have no meta
description at all.

This little statistic speaks volumes, especially if you acknowledge that the meta description isn’t
a ranking factor per se, but still recognize their potential to influence searcher behavior, and insist
on ending every meta with a cheerful, imperative CTA. Leaving aside how CTAs are nowhere in
Google’s webmaster guidelines or any other medium for optimizing meta descriptions, consider
whether Google itself is likely to automatically generate a CTA for a meta description — or if it
will simply summarize the content on the page, indicate its relevance to a query, and leave it to
searchers to choose what they click on.

Google knows, as any competent SEO knows, that what influences searcher behavior most is
finding what they are looking for in a SERP. That generally translates to relevance, and content
quality — neither of which requires a CTA to compel searchers to recognize the connection.
Cramming a CTA into your meta description might warm the cockles of your marketer’s heart,
but in practice, it is a poor use of the tag and a gross misunderstanding of SEO.

All this seems to point to meta descriptions being, at worst, a waste of your valuable time and
marketing energy, and at best, perhaps equal to a coin-flip chance of impacting the human
experience of your page in the SERP.