Document does not have a meta description

The <meta name="description"> 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.

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 <meta name=description> element.
  • The content attribute of the <meta name=description> element is empty.

Lighthouse doesn't evaluate the quality of your description.

How to add a meta description

Add a <meta name=description> element to the <head> of each of your pages:

<meta name="description" content="Put your description here.">

If appropriate, include clearly tagged facts in the descriptions. For example:

<meta name="description" content="Author: A.N. Author,
    Illustrator: P. Picture, Category: Books, Price: $17.99,
    Length: 784 pages">

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
<meta name="description" content="A donut recipe.">

Too vague.

Do
<meta
  name="description"
  content="Mary's simple recipe for maple bacon donuts
           makes a sticky, sweet treat with just a hint
           of salt that you'll keep coming back for.">

Descriptive yet concise.

See Google's Create good titles and snippets in Search Results page for more tips.

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