Every page has a meta description

When a page has no meta description, Google synthesizes a snippet from random on-page text — often a navigation fragment, a cookie banner, or a stray sentence that destroys click-through rate. A hand-written description controls what prospects read below your title in results, drives qualified clicks, and becomes the default preview when the page is shared without Open Graph tags. Missing descriptions cede that 160-character sales pitch to whatever the crawler grabs first.

Add a description field to the same metadata export you use for the title. Write one per page — reusing the homepage description everywhere is the same failure as having none.

// app/about/page.tsx
export const metadata = {
  title: 'About Us | YourSite',
  description: 'Learn about our team, mission, and the story behind YourSite.',
}

If descriptions are content-driven, generate them in generateMetadata from the same source that produces the page body.

• ID: seo-fundamentals.meta-tags.meta-description

• Severity: high

• What to look for: Check for meta description tags across page routes. Same detection approach as title — look for metadata.description exports, <meta name="description"> in head components, or framework-specific equivalents.

• Pass criteria: Count all page routes. Every page route has a meta description set, either directly or via a layout default. At least 2 distinct description strings must exist across all routes. Do NOT pass when fewer than 100% of page routes have a description mechanism (explicit or inherited). Before evaluating, extract and quote the first meta description string you find in the codebase.

• Fail criteria: Any page route lacks a meta description, or all pages share the same static description. Report: "X of Y page routes have meta descriptions."

• Skip (N/A) when: Never — every web page benefits from a meta description.

• Detail on fail: Name the specific page routes lacking descriptions. Example: "No meta description found on /dashboard, /settings, /profile pages"

• Remediation: Meta descriptions appear in search results below the page title. Without them, search engines generate a snippet from page content, which is often unhelpful. Add descriptions in your metadata:

  export const metadata = {
    title: 'About Us | YourSite',
    description: 'Learn about our team, mission, and the story behind YourSite.',
  }