SEO MYTH #05: “Meta descriptions have a huge impact on search rankings.”
Meta descriptions are HTML attributes that concisely explain the contents of webpages. You’ve seen them before on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), where they’re commonly used as review snippets. So, it’d make sense that Google’s algorithm would take these meta descriptions into account when determining search rankings … right? Well, not so much.
All the way back in 2009, Google announced that meta descriptions (and meta keywords) have no bearing on search rankings. That’s not to say that these descriptions aren’t important for SEO, though. On the contrary, in fact: Meta descriptions present a major opportunity to separate yourself from the riff-raff and convince searchers that your page is worth navigating to.
Although meta descriptions may not affect rankings, they do affect clickthrough rates, which are important. Having a relevant, compelling meta description can be the difference between a searcher who clicks through to your page and one who clicks elsewhere. And guess what: Bing and other search engines evaluate clickthrough rate as a ranking factor.
Unfortunately, Google has been avoiding giving a straight answer to the question of whether their algorithm rewards sites with higher clickthrough rates. In his well known presentation “How Google Works,” long-time Google software engineer Paul Haahr explained that his team at Google conducts live experiments of SERP ranking where they look for changes in click patterns, but it’s unclear whether their algorithm actually rewards search results that get more clicks based on these tests.
