The Curious Case of Meta Descriptions
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Hello Reader, Something interesting is happening with meta descriptions… and I think it's relevant for most of the folks who read my emails. But first, let's back up for a second and look at what a meta description is. A meta description or SEO description is a backend description on a page or post on your website. It's basically a supporting character not your SEO title or title tag. I like to use them as a bit of marketing juice as well, as it's often the first contact someone has with my clients' brand. Despite what some folks may claim, Google does not use the meta description as a search ranking signal and hasn’t since 2003 or earlier—yes, you read that right, 2003. Google also rewrites meta descriptions up to 70% of the time, based on the searcher’s intent. (Your description, like your title, is less likely to be rewritten when you do the same.) Old-fashioned dictionary-style keyword matching does at most, very little, here in 2026. (Yes, people are still doing the dictionary style keyword matching, and SEO plugins like Yoast and others “score” your SEO based on this outdated metric. I know, none of it makes any sense—SEO is the Wild West and the multiverse all wrapped into one chaotic package.) With all that said, meta descriptions—yours or the ones rewritten by Google—often heavily influence click through rate. (This means the number of clicks in the search engine divided by the number of times your page is shown). It makes sense, right? It’s the first impression you give a searcher and it’s a great bit of marketing. (I cover this in my Magnetic Metas course.) Now here’s the interesting thing: these misunderstood little meta descriptions seem to be playing an outsized role in pages being cited by the LLMs marketed as AI. You know, ChatGPT etc. They seem to be near-quoting meta descriptions on blog posts, services pages, and elsewhere. Again, it’s not due to keyword matching. Instead, the pattern matching baked into this software seems to recognize conversational style snippets in descriptions and then uses them to determine what pages they cite. (Remember: this software is not actually “intelligent,” it looks for patterns.) What does this intriguing development mean for you? In a sense, same as it has been for many years: focus on engaging your searcher via their intention and use natural, human language when writing meta descriptions. Sure, weaving a keyword group (remember, we’re not focused on singular dictionary matching) into the description helps with the pattern matching, but focus on the complete story first and foremost. So, if you've been considering skipping this step on your next blog post, think again. Take the time to write that description and see if they tip the scales a bit in your favor. Talk soon, Sarah |