The `<meta name="description">` element provides a summary of a page's content
that search engines include in search results. A high-quality, unique meta
description makes your page appear more relevant and can increase your search
traffic.

## How the Lighthouse meta description audit fails

[Lighthouse](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/overview) flags pages
without a meta description:
![Lighthouse audit showing the document doesn't have a meta description](https://developer.chrome.com/static/docs/lighthouse/seo/meta-description/image/lighthouse-audit-showing-bb9b6ba4a536e.png)

The audit fails if:

- Your page doesn't have a `<meta name=description>` element.
- The `content` attribute of the `<meta name=description>` element is empty.

Lighthouse doesn't evaluate the quality of your description.

> [!NOTE]
> **Note:** Each SEO audit is weighted equally in the Lighthouse SEO Score, except for the manual **[Structured data is valid](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/seo/structured-data)** audit. Learn more in the [Lighthouse Scoring Guide](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/performance/performance-scoring).

## How to add a meta description

Add a `<meta name=description>` element to the `<head>` of each of your pages:

    <meta name="description" content="Put your description here.">

If appropriate, include clearly tagged facts in the descriptions. For example:

    <meta name="description" content="Author: A.N. Author,
        Illustrator: P. Picture, Category: Books, Price: $17.99,
        Length: 784 pages">

## Meta description best practices

- Use a unique description for each page.
- Make descriptions clear and concise. Avoid vague descriptions like "Home."
- Avoid [keyword stuffing](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66358). It doesn't help users, and search engines may mark the page as spam.
- Descriptions don't have to be complete sentences; they can contain structured data.

Here are examples of good and bad descriptions:
Don't

```html
<meta name="description" content="A donut recipe.">
```
Too vague.
Do

```html
<meta
  name="description"
  content="Mary's simple recipe for maple bacon donuts
           makes a sticky, sweet treat with just a hint
           of salt that you'll keep coming back for.">
```
Descriptive yet concise.

See Google's [Create good titles and snippets in Search Results](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624#1)
page for more tips.

## Resources

- [Source code for **Document does not have a meta description** audit](https://github.com/GoogleChrome/lighthouse/blob/main/core/audits/seo/meta-description.js)
- [Create good titles and snippets in Search Results](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624#1)
- [Irrelevant keywords](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66358)