A meta description is a short HTML tag that summarises a page's content — usually shown as the snippet of text under the blue link in Google's search results.
A meta description lives in a page's HTML head and typically runs up to around 150-160 characters before search engines truncate it in results. It doesn't directly affect rankings the way page content or backlinks do, but it strongly influences whether someone actually clicks your result over a competitor's. Google doesn't always use the meta description you write — it sometimes generates its own snippet from the page content if it judges that to better match the searcher's query. Writing a clear, accurate, compelling meta description improves the odds Google uses it, and improves click-through rate when it does.
Two pages can rank in the exact same position and get very different amounts of traffic based on how compelling their meta description is. It's one of the few pieces of SEO copy written directly for a human reader in the moment they're deciding whether to click, rather than for a search engine's crawler.
Illumae's site audit flags pages with missing or poorly optimised meta descriptions as part of every crawl, so you can find and fix the gaps across your whole site rather than checking page by page.
Roughly 150-160 characters is the practical limit before Google truncates it in most cases, though the exact cutoff varies by device and how the snippet is rendered. Write for clarity first and keep an eye on length.
Not directly — it’s not a ranking factor Google uses to decide position. It does affect click-through rate, which can indirectly influence performance over time as more or fewer people choose to visit your page from the results.
Google will usually generate one automatically by pulling text from the page itself, which may or may not represent the page well or match what the searcher is looking for. Writing your own gives you control over that first impression.
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