Every page has a meta description
Why it matters
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.
Severity rationale
High because a missing description silently hands copywriting control to an algorithm and depresses click-through on every query.
Remediation
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.
DetectionPro
The detection method for this pattern is part of AuditBuffet Pro.
The full method (what to look for, pass and fail conditions, and how results get reported) ships inside the SEO Fundamentals Audit. The pattern definition, severity rationale, and remediation remain openly licensed under CC-BY-4.0.
Taxons
History
- 2026-04-18·v1.0.0·Initial import from seo-fundamentals·automated