The official Google Webmaster Central Blog posted a few months ago a nice post on writing meta description tags.
Well, this is actually much more interesting than it seems. For years, one of the most common SEO myths around the industry was that “Google ignores Meta tags” and that it is not relevant anymore. Then here comes Google and says – I CARE!
This phenomenon re-occured a few weeks ago when Google launched an improved Google Webmaster Tools user interface which is now showing duplicate titles and description tags in your web site pages. They CARE!
So what do they say?
1. Write a descriptive and interesting to read description (nothing new here)
2. Do not repeat what you’ve already stated in the title (oh oh… this sounds familiar!)
3. Avoid duplications and avoid looking “spammy”. If you are a big site and need automatic tags, you’re in a bit of a jam (oopsy)
For sum:
Google reads Meta descriptions. it also shows it in search results pages. Meta description matters. It isn’t the core of your SEO, but neglecting these tags will certainly miss out on a lot of potential action.