Do You Use Meta Description Anymore?

[Mealtog]

There has been talk that many major search engines no longer use Meta Descriptions anymore as they have been heavily used for spamming. Has anyone stopped using Meta Description? I see the Yoast SEO plugin actually kind of make fun of people who would want to use this tag.

If you do a search in search engines, they default to showing the first sentence of your body content if you do not have a meta description. My opinion is that the first sentence of an article may not be the best thing to show a user who have found your listing in a search engine.

From what I can see, search engines say they may not use your meta description to rank you but when you have a better click through rate in the listing, this will boost your rankings no? So meta description, in my opinion, is used secondarily to help your rankings.

Any thoughts on this?

[nutsandbolts]

I make heavy use of meta descriptions because I like to control what people see in search results. Being able to explain what my post is about is way better than depending on the first sentence or two of my post, which may or may not give people a good idea of the topic covered. Google still uses the meta description in search results, so that's good enough for me. 🙂

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Andrea Whitmer, Owner/Developer, Nuts and Bolts Media
I provide development and training services for designers • Find me on Twitter and Google+

[Mealtog]

Andrea, likewise. I have used meta description forever and plan to do so just because of that reason. As I mentioned, a better CTR can be affected by a better description in the search engines so in my opinion, meta description not only helps users but may help with listings as we'll. Not sure why Yoast and other internet marketing gurus keep pushing that meta description should not be used.

[nutsandbolts]

I think it just depends on whether you're writing for humans or search engines. I use meta descriptions because I want real people to see what my content is about. I don't really care if it helps my rankings or not - I just want people to be able to find the best link to click on. Because of that strategy, I've never really been impacted by Google's algorithm changes, Penguin, Panda, etc. I don't worry about that stuff because people will naturally click on what's most relevant to them. If that's not my post, that's fine with me.

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Andrea Whitmer, Owner/Developer, Nuts and Bolts Media
I provide development and training services for designers • Find me on Twitter and Google+

[sdbroker]

@Mealtog Google's Matt Cutts has publicly said that meta-keywords are no longer used by the engines and Yoast is saying the same... NOT meta-description. Actually Yoast's SEO plug-in insists that you enter a meta-description. It is always showing on the engine results, unless the user's keywords are not including in your meta-description.
Meta-description is the second most important meta after your title.

[JerryS]

Meta tags are one thing (which are said to be pretty useless now). Meta-descriptions are another matter.

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