Does meta descriptions still helping in Google?

Meta descriptions were never ignored by any search engines. It's the meta keywords tag that got booted for over spamming. Meta description tag is still very important for major search engines especially Google. Google had long stated that they don't use meta description for ranking purpose but are using it only for snippet purposes. But this snippet is what your users see so its important to make sure it has the right combination of keywords as well as marketing strength. Most people prefer to use their phone numbers directly on title or meta description tag this is an effective way but you might loose the chance of adding some important phrases if you are adding too much marketing words so make sure you also include good keywords you are targeting. Google will try to relate the keywords on your page with meta description tag to valuate the effectiveness and accuracy before it shows up in search engines. So better have good keywords on the description tag.



Google does take lot of effort and show in your webmaster tools whether you have duplicate descriptions if Google is taking so much care I am sure it considers meta description tag important. For one client who came to us recently his site never had any meta descriptions written Google was able to figure out something from his page but it looked really bad. Google took the menu of his site as the description and it looked spammy so better write good descriptions so Google will use it.



Remember Google's algorithm and search is very complicated and they need to return results from billions of pages within a fraction of a second. So when they get a query first they try to find relevancy from meta description and then they go to the actual page. Better the meta description faster the results will be. Also Meta description helps in increasing click through rates if they are written well. To conclude write what is best for your users search engines will endorse that for sure.