Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Missing meta descriptions from Google SERPs

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Missing meta descriptions from Google SERPs

    Technical SEO
    5
    11
    3003
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • suchde
      suchde last edited by

      Hullo all,

      I run an e-commerce website and hence have a lot of product category/sub-category pages to handle. Despite giving each of these category pages meta descriptions, in the Google SERPs, a lot of these descriptions don't show up fully.

      Rather, only half the text that I'd inputed as my meta desc. shows up; the other half has generic stuff from that page given.  I've attached a screen shot to give you an example of what comes up in the SERPs.

      Could you please tell me what exactly is the problem? Is it a coding issue? Or has Google not crawled that page? Need help asap!

      Thank you in advance!

      aE9RKXJ

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Devanur-Rafi
        Devanur-Rafi @suchde last edited by

        Hi, yes Google does not care about the keywords meta tag but abusing it is also not recommended as some other search engines still consider this tag a little bit. Moreover, abusing or over optimizing keywords meta tag tells a lot about the intent of a webmaster which is even more dangerous.

        Best,

        Devanur Rafi.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Chris.Menke
          Chris.Menke @suchde last edited by

          No, as long as you're not also spamming your page copy with your specific target keywords.  Nonetheless, it doesn't look very professional.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • josh-riley
            josh-riley @suchde last edited by

            We don't even bother populating that section any more. Now, that said, Bing does care about them to some degree, so it depends how much you may care about that search engine.

            Matt Cutts has specifically said Google doesn't care about meta keywords, so I find it surprising that it'd be used to penalize.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Chris.Menke
              Chris.Menke @suchde last edited by

              More relevance while leaning towards click through rate/call to action.  It's a balance.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • suchde
                suchde @Devanur-Rafi last edited by

                Thank you Devanur, I shall definitely look into this. I do have a question though- if Google doesn't really care about the keywords meta tag, then it shouldn't matter what I have written in it, right? So do you think I'll still be in potential danger of an over optimisation penalty, keep this in mind?

                josh-riley Chris.Menke Devanur-Rafi 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • suchde
                  suchde @Chris.Menke last edited by

                  So the only way out would be to have more relevant meta descriptions, right? Any words on that?

                  Thank you Chris!

                  Chris.Menke 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • suchde
                    suchde @PremioOscar last edited by

                    Thank you PremioOscar. Will keep this in mind.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • Devanur-Rafi
                      Devanur-Rafi last edited by

                      Chris has it spot on..

                      Was just curious at the keywords meta tag on your home page:

                      With this kind of keywords meta tag you are definitely inviting an over optimization penalty. Moreover, you can safely drop the keywords meta tag and its of little to no use these days and Google does not care about it.

                      Best,

                      Devanur Rafi.

                      suchde 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • Chris.Menke
                        Chris.Menke last edited by

                        suchde, as says premiooscar, it is not a given that Google uses your meta description in the snippet.  In fact, in Google's own words, "Google will sometimes use the meta description of a page in search results snippets, if we think it gives users a more accurate description than would be possible purely from the on-page content." In fact, you can  find that for each different search query that your page comes as a result, you can have a different snippet--it could be the fully from the meta description, fully from the page copy, or a combination of page copy and  meta description info.

                        • https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?hl=en
                        • http://moz.com/blog/why-wont-google-use-my-meta-description
                        suchde 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • PremioOscar
                          PremioOscar last edited by

                          Hello there,

                          Sometimes Google picks up other information from the page rather than using the meta description when it considers that your meta description are not very relevant for what customers have looked for.

                          Just make your meta descriptions more relevant.

                          suchde 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • 1 / 1
                          • First post
                            Last post

                          Got a burning SEO question?

                          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                          Start my free trial


                          Browse Questions

                          Explore more categories

                          • Moz Tools

                            Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                          • SEO Tactics

                            Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                          • Community

                            Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                          • Digital Marketing

                            Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                          • Research & Trends

                            Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                          • Support

                            Connect on product support and feature requests.

                          • See all categories

                          Related Questions

                          • ellenu

                            HTML entity characters in meta descriptions

                            Is it okay to leave HTML entity characters, such as " in meta descriptions? Will search engines translate these appropriately?

                            Technical SEO | | ellenu
                            0
                          • GhillC

                            Duplicated titles and meta descriptions

                            Hi, Dealing with both my duplicated titles and meta descriptions i'm wondering if there's a "quick" win I could potentially implement asap. A bit of background:
                            Say I've 4 pages structured that way: domain.com/us/productA.html for the US domain.com/gb/productA.html the UK domain.com/fr/productA.html for France domain.com/de/productA.html For Germany At the moment, both my page titles and meta-descriptions are duplicated all over the place for product A.
                            Title is reading "Product A - company name"
                            MD is a bit better, being translated in all 3 languages (En, Fr, DE). Therefore being the same for the US and for the UK. Ideally, I would get unique page titles and MD all over the place. However, due to time and resource constraints, I can't make it happen overnight. So my questions are pretty simple:
                            1. Can I create a rule for page titles to be "Product A - country - company name" or similar? Would that be enough to make the page titles unique? Is there any value doing so?
                            2. Can I "localize" duplicate MD by simply naming the country? I assume it is not enough in this case as all the rest would be copy/pasted. Ideally speaking, both my page titles and MD would be completely unique but I can't afford doing so in the short term. Thanks!

                            Technical SEO | | GhillC
                            0
                          • Dynata_panel_marketing

                            Bing webmaster tools incorrectly showing missing title and description tags

                            Hey all, Was wondering if anyone else has come across this issue. Bing is showing title and description tags missing in the head of my wordpress blog. I can't seem to find any documentation on this. Thanks, Roman

                            Technical SEO | | Dynata_panel_marketing
                            0
                          • SatishSEOSiren

                            Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions are not Indexing in Google

                            Hello Every one, I have a Wordpress website in which i installed All in SEO plugin and wrote meta titles and descriptions for each and every page and posts and submitted website to index. But after Google crawl the Meta Titles and Descriptions shown by Google are something different that are not found in Content. Even i verified the Cached version of the website and gone through Source code that crawled at that moment. the meta title which i have written is present there. Apart from this, the same URL's are displaying perfect meta titles and descriptions which i wrote in Yahoo and Bing Search Engines. Can anyone explain me how to resolve this issue. Website URL: thenewyou (dot) in Regards,

                            Technical SEO | | SatishSEOSiren
                            0
                          • frnprz

                            Links under Meta Description when performing a search

                            Doing research for clients, I have came across seeing sites displaying hyperlinks underneath their own meta description. keywords that I have googled that result with hyperlinks displaying under meta descriptions: Google'd: iacquire (brand) bmw wheels (Beyern Wheels, position 1) aftermarket bmw wheels (MMR Wheels, position 2) These companys have hyperlinks underneath their descriptions. Anyone have any ideas why this happens or how it happens?

                            Technical SEO | | frnprz
                            0
                          • JohnHuynh

                            Miss meta description on 404 page

                            Hi, My 404 page did not have meta description. Is it an error? Because I run report and seomoz said that a problem. Thanks!

                            Technical SEO | | JohnHuynh
                            0
                          • SiliconBeachTraining

                            What can I do about missing Meta Description for category pagest etc.?

                            On all my campaigns I'm returning high levels of 'Missing Meta Description Tags'. The problem with fixing this is they're all for category, tag and author pages. Is there a way to add a meta description to these pages (there are hundreds) or will it not really have any ranking effect?

                            Technical SEO | | SiliconBeachTraining
                            0
                          • DarwinChinaSEO

                            Why google index my IP URL

                            hi guys, a question please. if site:112.65.247.14 , you can see google index our website IP address, this could duplicate with our darwinmarketing.com content pages. i am not quite sure why google index my IP pages while index domain pages, i understand this could because of backlink, internal link and etc, but i don't see obvious issues there, also i have submit request to google team to remove ip address index, but seems no luck. Please do you have any other suggestion on this? i was trying to do change of address setting in Google Webmaster Tools, but didn't allow as it said "Restricted to root level domains only", any ideas? Thank you! boson

                            Technical SEO | | DarwinChinaSEO
                            0

                          Get started with Moz Pro!

                          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                          Start my free trial
                          Products
                          • Moz Pro
                          • Moz Local
                          • Moz API
                          • Moz Data
                          • STAT
                          • Product Updates
                          Moz Solutions
                          • SMB Solutions
                          • Agency Solutions
                          • Enterprise Solutions
                          • Digital Marketers
                          Free SEO Tools
                          • Domain Authority Checker
                          • Link Explorer
                          • Keyword Explorer
                          • Competitive Research
                          • Brand Authority Checker
                          • Local Citation Checker
                          • MozBar Extension
                          • MozCast
                          Resources
                          • Blog
                          • SEO Learning Center
                          • Help Hub
                          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                          • How-to Guides
                          • Moz Academy
                          • API Docs
                          About Moz
                          • About
                          • Team
                          • Careers
                          • Contact
                          Why Moz
                          • Case Studies
                          • Testimonials
                          Get Involved
                          • Become an Affiliate
                          • MozCon
                          • Webinars
                          • Practical Marketer Series
                          • MozPod
                          Connect with us

                          Contact the Help team

                          Join our newsletter
                          Moz logo
                          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                          • Accessibility
                          • Terms of Use
                          • Privacy

                          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.