What is Meta description?
A meta description is a short summary in a page's HTML — best kept under about 155 characters — that search engines often display beneath the page title, acting as the advert for the click.
Also called: meta desc, search snippet, SERP description.
It is not a ranking factor and hasn't been for years, which is why people neglect it. It is a click-through factor, which matters just as much: two sites in positions three and four can swap places in practice because one of them wrote a description that sounded like a person and the other left a truncated fragment of body text.
Google rewrites descriptions roughly half the time, choosing a passage from the page that better matches the query. That is not a reason to skip writing one — it is a reason to make sure the page contains good candidate sentences.
The best ones do three things in one breath: confirm the visitor is in the right place, name a specific benefit or detail, and hint at the next step. "Emergency plumber in Leeds, on site within 90 minutes. Fixed call-out fee, no weekend surcharge." beats "We are a leading provider of plumbing solutions."
What to actually do about it
- Write a unique description per page — never reuse one across a site.
- Aim for 120–155 characters so it isn't truncated on mobile.
- Include the phrase people search for, naturally, once.
- Add a concrete detail: a price, a timeframe, a guarantee, a location.
- Skip the brand name unless the brand is the reason to click.
Koo drafts a unique title and description for every page and post from what the page actually says, flags any that are missing, duplicated or over length in the SEO audit, and lets you overwrite either in one click.
Related terms
Canonical URL
A canonical URL is the single address you declare as the official version of a page, using a rel="canonical" tag, so search engines consolidate ranking signals on one URL instead of splitting them across near-identical copies.
Long-tail keyword
A long-tail keyword is a longer, more specific search phrase with lower search volume but clearer intent and far less competition — for example "repair a leaking radiator valve in Leeds" rather than "plumber".
Alt text
Alt text is a short written description of an image in its alt attribute, read aloud by screen readers, shown when an image fails to load, and used by search engines to understand what the image shows.