As I reported recently, Google Recommends Using Meta Description Tag but why?

This Search Engine Watch Forums thread shows the perfect example of why a unique meta description is slightly important.

If you ever do a site: command, i.e. site:www.seroundtable.com and you see:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

That is a sign you do not have unique meta descriptions.

So then you click the "repeat the search with the omitted results included." You are then presented with unique title tags (if you have them) but shown the same description snippet for each result.

Why? Because it is pulling your header information.

For this reason, Google and other search engines like when you have a unique meta description, so they have something unique to put there. Typically, a normal search would show content from the page - and not use the meta description - but in these types of cases, the top of the source code, most likely the navigation, will be shown.

So in the case of the thread:

When I enter my URL in Google I get the following result.

For example my website is http*//www.xyz.com

Results

"http*//www.xyz.com
About Us, Contact Us, Links, Sitemap Copyrights 2007 http*//www.xyz.com All rights reserved."

Yea, but is it such a big deal? I don't think so, because who searches this way? In any event, it is fairly easy to do one of two things or even both of them.

(1) Add unique meta descriptions
(2) Use CSS positioning to make your body content come up as high as possible in the source code.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

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