The meta description tag: Crawl Audit check 53

Short answer: the meta description is a short summary of the page in code, <meta name="description" content="...">. Google sometimes shows it as the text under your link in search results. Check 53 fails if the page doesn't have one. Google writes most snippets from the page itself, but a good description gives it a better option to choose.

What Crawl Audit checks

• Pass: a <meta name="description"> with text in its content. The report shows what it found.
• Fail: it's missing or empty.

Its length is check 54, and whether it's unique is check 56.

What Google says

• "Snippets are primarily created from the page content itself. However, Google sometimes uses the meta description HTML element if it might give users a more accurate description of the page than content taken directly from the page."
• The SEO starter guide: "A good meta description is short, unique to one particular page, and includes the most relevant points of the page."
• On large sites, writing them from page data is fine: "programmatic generation of the descriptions can be appropriate and are encouraged. Good descriptions are human-readable and diverse."
• If you can't write one for every page: "at the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your home page and popular pages."

What a good one says

• What the page is, and who it's for.
• The details a searcher would want before clicking: a price, a location, a format, a date.
• Not a string of keywords. Google says those "don't give users a clear idea of the page's content".

On your platform

• WordPress: with Yoast, "Search appearance" in the sidebar opens the snippet editor. With Rank Math, "Edit Snippet", then the Description box.
• Shopify: "Edit website SEO" in the search engine listing preview. Shopify says descriptions can be set for pages, products, collections and blog posts.
• Wix: the page's SEO settings, under "SEO basics".
• Squarespace: "Click the SEO tab, then enter your description in the SEO Description field."
• Next.js: set description in metadata or generateMetadata.

Sources

• Google Search Central, Control your snippets in search results (updated 20 April 2026) and SEO starter guide, checked 3 October 2026.
• Yoast, Meta descriptions; Rank Math, SEO meta tags; Shopify, Adding keywords; Squarespace, Adding SEO descriptions.