Search
Every page has a search description
seo.missing-meta-description
Why this matters
The description is the grey summary under your link in Google. Without one, Google pulls an arbitrary sentence from the page, which often reads as nonsense out of context and gives people no reason to click.
Who fixes it
You can, usually
Roughly how long
Minutes
Care needed
Low risk to change
How to fix it
Write a 120–155 character summary for each page that says what the page offers and gives a reason to click.
On your platform
WordPress
There is no meta description field in WordPress itself; it comes from an SEO plugin. In Yoast, Rank Math or SEOPress it is the box under each page labelled as the search-result description, with a preview of how the result will look. Write the important pages by hand — a description generated from the first line of the page rarely gives anybody a reason to click.
Shopify
The description field in the search engine listing section at the bottom of each product, page or collection editor. Left empty, Shopify falls back to the start of the product description — which for most shops is a sentence written to sit under a photograph rather than to win a click.
Drupal
The Metatag module, on the content type and then per node. A token pattern gives every page something; the pages that matter are worth writing by hand.
Joomla
Built in: the Meta Description field on an article's Publishing tab, or under Metadata on the menu item. The menu item takes precedence where a page is reached through one.
How we score it
Failing this check takes up to 10 points off your search score. It is a fact about your site rather than a measurement, so it reads the same on every scan until you change something.
Does your site pass this one?
This check runs on every scan, along with the other 106. Free, no account, and you see the evidence for each result.
Check my siteOther search checks
- Canonical tags point somewhere validA canonical tag tells Google which address is the real one for a page. When it points somewhere wrong — another domain, a dead page, or the wrong protocol — Google follows it anyway, and the page you wanted indexed can be dropped in favour of one that does not exist.
- Content has been updated recentlySome content is meant to sit still, and age alone is not a fault. But prices, opening hours and staff pages that have not been touched in over a year are usually wrong by now — and a visitor who acts on the wrong opening hours does not come back to check whether the rest was right.
- Descriptions are a sensible lengthLong descriptions get truncated mid-sentence; very short ones waste the space you are given.
- Each page has exactly one title tagA page can only have one title. When there are several, the browser and Google each pick one — and they do not always pick the same one, so what you see in the tab may not be what appears in search.
- Each page has one main headingSeveral top-level headings makes the structure of the page ambiguous. Worth checking rather than urgent — modern HTML permits it, and Google handles it, but it usually signals that headings are being chosen for their size.
- Every page has a main headingThe h1 is the headline of the page. Without one, both visitors skimming and search engines parsing the page have nothing telling them what it is about.