A short block of HTML text describing a webpage's content, not directly visible on the page itself but often displayed as the descriptive snippet beneath a page's title in search engine results.
Why it matters
While meta descriptions don't directly affect search ranking, they significantly influence whether someone actually clicks a result once they see it — a compelling, accurate meta description can meaningfully improve click-through rate even at an identical ranking position.
In a sentence
"We rewrote the meta description to lead with the specific benefit instead of a generic summary, and click-through rate on that result improved."
Related terms
- Often confused with: Meta title (a meta description is the descriptive summary text; a meta title, also called a title tag, is the clickable headline of the search result itself — the two are separate HTML elements that work together in how a result appears).
- Synonyms: SEO description.