Meta Description
A meta description is the short summary tag that search engines may display beneath your title in results. It is not a ranking factor, but a well-written one raises click-through rate, which decides how much traffic a given ranking actually delivers.
Why it matters for your rankings
Meta descriptions are advertising copy for a listing you do not control. Google rewrites them roughly two thirds of the time, usually when the page contains a passage that matches the query better than your description does.
That statistic leads some teams to skip them entirely, which is a mistake. When Google does use yours, it is often on the branded and commercial queries that matter most, where you want control of the message. A description that states the specific benefit and includes the searcher's phrasing outperforms one that restates the title. The other common error is length: anything past roughly 155 characters gets truncated, and the truncation usually lands mid-sentence in the part you cared about.
How to check it on your site
Find pages missing descriptions
Crawl with Screaming Frog and filter the Meta Description tab for Missing and for Over 155 Characters.
Check which ones Google rewrites
Search your key pages and compare the displayed snippet against your written description. Rewrites signal a mismatch with query intent.
Prioritise by impressions
Write descriptions for high-impression, low-CTR pages first. That is where a better snippet earns the most incremental clicks.
Write a benefit and a reason to click
State what the page delivers and why it is worth the click, rather than repeating the title in longer form.