I thought we already knew this? Using the description tag helps for display purposes, but does nada for actual ranking - unless you learned something else Barry, that you're keeping to yourself. ;-)

I think this is the first time Google said this publicly. I can be wrong...

Great find Barry! It's great to see Google make this recommendation, even though it is quite vague of how it affects "rankings". Like Andy I don't think it matters for beans - but it does get people to click on listings.

You're never wrong Barry!

It's always good to have an authoritative source link. This was a great find, Barry!

Thanks.

This is actually a great find Barry, because Vanessa is responding to a guy with indexing problems, not low SERP CTR or ranking issues.

I think they say something else now, see snippets better than meta description

Nice Article. I wonder why dont many people use the Meta Tags more often than what they do.

What is true if i use double meta description in my blog? thanks

I see no conflict between the two viewpoints. If you have some crummy beginning text that you have displayed at the beginning of every article that would make all of your search results text look the same, then snippets might not be a good idea, put in a meta. If you want custom metas for every page you can do this every time, just remember, that it seems that you need your meta data, if read as your results snippet on the search engine, to match what your INTERNAL data shows your visitors are actually searching for. This is a good way to increase click through conversion without rewriting your content completely. Thanks Google, finally some information we can use for once.

I see no conflict between the two viewpoints. If you have some crummy beginning text that you have displayed at the beginning of every article that would make all of your search results text look the same, then snippets might not be a good idea, put in a meta. If you want custom metas for every page you can do this every time, just remember, that it seems that you need your meta data, if read as your results snippet on the search engine, to match what your INTERNAL data shows your visitors are actually searching for. This is a good way to increase click through conversion without rewriting your content completely. Thanks Google, finally some information we can use for once.