Description vs meta description

[nchachula]

I have an e-commerce website and am trying to create product category pages. I am under the impression that Description is the text that would appear under the title on a google search and I believe the meta description is just what google reads? Is having BOTH important or just description? Is it ok to duplicate the description for the meta description? I know its not good to duplicate descriptions on other products and pages.

[-Ash-]

Hi Nicholas,

Here is a list of useful refernces.

https://www.google.com.au/search?client=opera&q=matt+cutts+meta+description&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

[RyanPurkey]

Meta description will be what you write as the suggested description for Google to display in the search results, but Google will often rewrite the description to better match someone's search and their understanding of your page. They'll either pull text from another location on your page that matches terms or related terms of a user's search, rewrite title tags from time to time, or display what you write.  See: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624.  Cheers!