Is Google creating meta descriptions on the fly?

[muzzmoz]

I'm doing some competitor analysis for a client. I'm looking at the client's title tags and meta descriptions for specific search results, in comparison to their main competitor. I'm trying to establish if the client is ranking higher due to better relevance, or just because they have higher PA and DA. It appears to be the latter.

Observations:

• For both the client and their competitor, their home pages appear in the results much more frequently than specific landing pages
• The meta description Google chooses to display in the search results for the home page does not always match the ACTUAL meta description for the page and appears to vary depending on the specific search query

Questions:

• Does Google create meta descriptions on the fly?
• Is this an example of Google using semantic search?
• And if so, why are we bothering to type customised meta descriptions for specific pages, if Google is just going to recreate them anyway?
• Is Google displaying results of the home pages simply because they cannot find pages more relevant (ie. if we produced landing pages more relevant to these specific search queries, would Google rank them higher)?

[muzzmoz]

thanks mate!

[Andy-Halliday]

Meta descriptions are what you request Google to display, these are a request and Google does sometimes use other information if it feels its more relevant.

This isn't new and I've seen it numerous times over the last 5 or so years.

Dr Pete even did a blog article on this (very old 2011 - https://moz.com/blog/why-wont-google-use-my-meta-description but its still relevant.

Also the question has been asked and answered on here before: https://moz.com/community/q/google-not-pulling-the-right-title-tag-meta-description - I could cover the same answers in this post, but we all know Google hates duplicate content.