Does Google ignore duplicate meta descriptions?

[Europarl_SEO_Team]

Hi there SEO mozzers,

I am dealing with a website that has duplicate meta descriptions (we know is bad).As a punishment, Google totally ignores the meta descriptions and picks content from the website and displays it in SERP.

I already read the https://moz.com/blog/why-wont-google-use-my-meta-description but I was wondering if there is more information/knowledge out there.

Any tips are appreciated!

[Europarl_SEO_Team]

Hi Nikki,

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.

I was worried that this is precisely the case.

[nhhernandez]

Yes, if your meta descriptions are duplicates, Google won't use these and instead get a snippet of content on the page. If you want Google to use your assigned meta description, write original and quality descriptions. If there's absolutely no way for you to assign individual descriptions on pages (I've seen some page structures built to share 1 metatitle & description - it's ridiculous), make sure the first few sentences of the page are acceptable as your description as Google would likely pull that info.