Meta description

A meta description is a short summary of a page, written in an invisible HTML tag in the page's header:

<meta name="description" content="Award-winning wines from Napa Valley and Lavaux, shipped worldwide.">

Search engines often show it as the snippet under a result, and AI assistants use it as a quick, author-approved statement of what the page is about. A good meta description is specific, accurate, and roughly a sentence or two (under about 160 characters).

Search engines treat it as a hint rather than a guarantee: Google may still generate its own snippet from the page's visible content if it judges that to describe the page better, which is one more reason the description should be an honest summary rather than marketing copy stuffed with keywords.

Learn more

• How to write meta descriptions - Google's guidance on snippets and the meta description tag