I’ve long believed that the meta description tag on websites have not been used as a ranking factor in Google. In fact, over the years I’ve conducted tests on this and found it to be true for my own websites.
However, now Google’s Martin Splitt has tweeted out a confusing message the contradicts this line of thought and the opinion of Google’s John Mueller as well.
Here’s what Splitt tweeted:
“Well, they and the title are making up the first impression of what someone searching sees from your site and helps Google Search to get a short summary of what you consider important about the page.”
— Martin Splitt @ ? (@g33konaut) August 6, 2020
When asked for clarification, Martin restated what he had said:
“As I said: it helps Google Search better understand what you care about in terms of content for the site, too.”
— Martin Splitt @ ? (@g33konaut) August 6, 2020
Why the split with Splitt and Mueller?
It’s probably a matter of semantics, but I will side with Mueller and my own observations on this one.
Citation
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-martin-splitt-meta-description/376829/#close
