Google rewrites meta descriptions.

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What is a meta description?
That grey text, so characteristic, so familiar, right? To be precise, it is an html tag that, as its name indicates, describes the content of a URL.

This:

meta-description
meta description
What is a meta description for?
By optimizing this HTML element with keywords, we will, in theory, improve the click through rate of our search results.

The click-to-impression ratio would improve since when our meta description contains the keywords that the user is searching for, Google will highlight them in bold and this gives more visibility to our result.

An example:

For the search “how much is a thermomix worth” (like this, without an accent)

The second result is as follows.

Search result for the price of Thermomix
Search result for the price of Thermomix
As we can see in the image, the search engine highlights the letters using bold. ….but, in reality, I have told you a lie ….the result you have seen is not the original meta description contained in that URL.

This is the meta description present in code:

<meta name=»description» content=» The cost of this kitchen robot seems like a secret, but it is not. How much does the Thermomix cost? It cannot be easily purchased in any commercial area, where can you buy it? «/>

We have been deceived.
Below is a comparison of the three meta descriptions that actually exist for this search result:

Comparison of different meta descriptions in search results
In this image you can see the comparison between:

Improve your SEO!
– Meta description in code : The original idea. What the SEO, content writer or international email database webmaster of this website decided the meta description had to be based on the attributes of this product.

– Indexed meta description without search : What Google has decided to index (we used an advanced search command like site:url) to find this. As you can see, it cuts off more or less from character 133. We could say that this meta description is the one that Google has in its database.

– Indexed meta description for the search “How much does the Thermomix cost?” The meta description that Google builds to satisfy the user’s search.

That's right, guys, Google reconstructs an HTML element to satisfy the user's search. Google treats meta descriptions as a dynamic element, not a static one.

In fact, I'll say it again, Google parses the existing meta description in the HTML, analyzes the text content of the website, and dynamically rewrites the meta description to fit the user's search.

Ok. That's clear, but what does this mean? If we analyze the search result, we see that it consists of two parts separated by ellipses.

On the one hand:

-“ How much does the Thermomix cost ? It is not possible either… This first part of the meta description coincides with the one proposed by the website.

On the other hand:

-“We don’t know how much this amazing kitchen robot costs. But that’s not true.” This is the second part of the meta description and the amazing thing about it is:

Google decides to show a synonym for “vale”, in this case “cuesta” (cost) . If the user searches for “how much is it worth”, Google also chooses to show “how much is it”. At the language processing level, we can see how mature the search engine is.
The selected phrase exists, but within the web. Google selects the text inside the <p> </p> tag and turns it into a meta description.
Extract from the text of the web.
The big question: Does it make sense to spend time and resources on optimizing meta descriptions?
Wait a minute! To answer this question we first need to review one of the articles that has surprised me the most in my last few years as an SEO Consultant.

This is a study published by Michal Pecánek in September 2020. For some reason it has gone largely unnoticed in the Spanish SEO community.

I highly recommend you take a look at it. You can read it here in Spanish and other languages. It is based on the analysis of 192,656 pages that rank in the Top 10.

Their main conclusions are overwhelming:

25% of the best-ranking pages don't have a meta description.
Google rewrites meta descriptions 62% of the time.
The more “long tail” the meta description, the more likely Google is to rewrite the meta description.
So is meta description optimization worth it?
Absolutely YES! In fact, we need to change our approach by looking at what we have been presenting in this article. This post and the example of the Thermomix queries imply the importance that keywords have for Google now that it is able to understand synonyms.

Logically, if Google is able to “read and select” extracts and use them as it pleases, we cannot afford not to have this information, these keywords, on our pages. I would even go further and tell you that the use of synonyms can make a competitive difference compared to our competitors.

Now that you have decided to put some love into the semantics of your website, I recommend that you take a look at the most powerful SEO extensions for Google Chrome in this post on the SEOCOM Agency blog.