Document does not have a meta description
May 2, 2019 — Updated Apr 8, 2021
Available in: Español, 日本語, 한국어, Português, Русский, 中文, English
Appears in: SEO audits
The element provides a summary of a page’s content that search engines include in search results. A high-quality, unique meta description makes your page appear more relevant and can increase your search traffic.
How the Lighthouse meta description audit fails #
Lighthouse flags pages without a meta description:
Lighthouse audit showing the document doesn’t have a meta description
The audit fails if:
Your page doesn’t have a element.
The content attribute of the element is empty.
Lighthouse doesn’t evaluate the quality of your description.
Each SEO audit is weighted equally in the Lighthouse SEO Score, except for the manual Structured data is valid audit. Learn more in the Lighthouse Scoring Guide.
How to add a meta description #
Add a element to the
of each of your pages:If appropriate, include clearly tagged facts in the descriptions. For example:
Meta description best practices #
Use a unique description for each page.
Make descriptions clear and concise. Avoid vague descriptions like “Home.”
Avoid keyword stuffing. It doesn’t help users, and search engines may mark the page as spam.
Descriptions don’t have to be complete sentences; they can contain structured data.
Here are examples of good and bad descriptions:
Don’t
Too vague.
Do
Descriptive yet concise.
See Google’s Create good titles and snippets in Search Results page for more tips.
Resources #
Source code for Document does not have a meta description audit
Create good titles and snippets in Search Results
Irrelevant keywords
Last updated: Apr 8, 2021 — Improve article
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