I'm sharing this with you all based on findings from a 6 month trial we did. There's no right or wrong and you can use this to your advantage or not.
We have been testing a number websites in a split involving pages with and without meta descriptions. The purpose was to determine whether the meta had an impact on conversions, click throughs etc. This is Google specific and we know that Yahoo/MSN still use this tag for ranking. Google doesn't - it is purely optional. See - Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Answering more popular picks: meta tags and web search
For newbs...the meta description is a tag within the head of a web page. It's primary use is to describe a web page's content in a short snippet of 160 characters. Other uses derived from SEO/SEM include;
1. A descriptive advert for the web page - in an attempt to improve click through rates.
2. A source of keywords - Google bolds out keywords in it's description when listing pages.
There is widespread belief that including the description tag in your web page that it will force Google to display this in it's listing and therefore increase appeal to the searcher which in turn improves your conversions.
I believe this to be flawed on 2 fronts A) You don't know what the searcher is searching on so how can you caluculate a click through rate. B) Google's algorithim decides the best description for any web page from the following;
i The meta description
ii The dmoz description (if your site has a listing)
iii The content form the web page.
It may decide to use a combination of all three or just one - either way relying on the meta description tag to appear in search results is risky.
There are disadvantages to having the description tag in the first place. Basically, including this forces Google to enter in into it's algorithim calculation and thereby you lessen your odds of the number of pages being listed in their results.
Why? Because the description is only 160 characters long. If Google's algorithim decides to include this in its results over your page content then your keywords are limited by virtue of the tag.
For example - a plumbers website has:
Meta Description - “Acme Plumbers based in Mytown for 10 years. Best Plumbers in the area Call us on 0207 111 1111″
Page Content - “Acme plumbers are a long established award winning company.We fit boilers, radiators, gas central heating and are BS9000 registered. We work to the highest plumbing standards and all our time served plumbers are qualified to BS5750 and above. We serve in areas throughout mytown and the surrounding distrcts etc., etc.”
Look at google's results in a search and notice how words are bolded.
If you include the meta description you allow limit the number of possible keywords. (plumbers,mytown,Acme)
If you exclude the meta description you force Google to look at page content and increase the possible keywords it can include in it's listings (plumbers,plumbing,qualified,standards,iso9000,bs5750,radiators,boilers,central heating)
For obvious reasons we can't divulge the websites but our results were overwhelming to say the least. The web pages that excluded the meta description had in many cases 20-50 longtail search results (keyword combinations) per page whereas the pages that included the meta description had 1-5.
Personaly, for webpages that have good keyword content or a shop with lots of product descriptions I would omit the meta description and let Google's algorithim do the work.
For webpages that have little or no relevant keywords such as a flash only page then I'd include the meta description.
We have been testing a number websites in a split involving pages with and without meta descriptions. The purpose was to determine whether the meta had an impact on conversions, click throughs etc. This is Google specific and we know that Yahoo/MSN still use this tag for ranking. Google doesn't - it is purely optional. See - Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Answering more popular picks: meta tags and web search
For newbs...the meta description is a tag within the head of a web page. It's primary use is to describe a web page's content in a short snippet of 160 characters. Other uses derived from SEO/SEM include;
1. A descriptive advert for the web page - in an attempt to improve click through rates.
2. A source of keywords - Google bolds out keywords in it's description when listing pages.
There is widespread belief that including the description tag in your web page that it will force Google to display this in it's listing and therefore increase appeal to the searcher which in turn improves your conversions.
I believe this to be flawed on 2 fronts A) You don't know what the searcher is searching on so how can you caluculate a click through rate. B) Google's algorithim decides the best description for any web page from the following;
i The meta description
ii The dmoz description (if your site has a listing)
iii The content form the web page.
It may decide to use a combination of all three or just one - either way relying on the meta description tag to appear in search results is risky.
There are disadvantages to having the description tag in the first place. Basically, including this forces Google to enter in into it's algorithim calculation and thereby you lessen your odds of the number of pages being listed in their results.
Why? Because the description is only 160 characters long. If Google's algorithim decides to include this in its results over your page content then your keywords are limited by virtue of the tag.
For example - a plumbers website has:
Meta Description - “Acme Plumbers based in Mytown for 10 years. Best Plumbers in the area Call us on 0207 111 1111″
Page Content - “Acme plumbers are a long established award winning company.We fit boilers, radiators, gas central heating and are BS9000 registered. We work to the highest plumbing standards and all our time served plumbers are qualified to BS5750 and above. We serve in areas throughout mytown and the surrounding distrcts etc., etc.”
Look at google's results in a search and notice how words are bolded.
If you include the meta description you allow limit the number of possible keywords. (plumbers,mytown,Acme)
If you exclude the meta description you force Google to look at page content and increase the possible keywords it can include in it's listings (plumbers,plumbing,qualified,standards,iso9000,bs5750,radiators,boilers,central heating)
For obvious reasons we can't divulge the websites but our results were overwhelming to say the least. The web pages that excluded the meta description had in many cases 20-50 longtail search results (keyword combinations) per page whereas the pages that included the meta description had 1-5.
Personaly, for webpages that have good keyword content or a shop with lots of product descriptions I would omit the meta description and let Google's algorithim do the work.
For webpages that have little or no relevant keywords such as a flash only page then I'd include the meta description.
