Mattcutts video transcript - Meta description still useful?

Tom From seattle asks

"Query deserves freshness." Fact of Fiction?

Its fact i have met people in newyork times and they said there are queries that deserve freshness so GDF ( Query Deserves Freshness ) that is what he talked in new york times and that is fact not fiction.



Quentin from Vancouver asks

In the search results, Google often display a snippet appropriate to the specific search query - often disregarding the meta description. Is Google doing away with meta description use like they did with meta keywords?



Alright let me lay a little bit schooling on you so it actually turns that we use to not use meta description at all we would only use the snippet appropriate to the search query and only in recent years if you have a meta description we choose to use it over the little snippet from the page so its moving the other direction from using snippets from only within the page we are now likely to use meta description from the page. But we don't use it all the time if we think its useful for the query dont make the same meta description on every single page like a cookie cutter then we know its not a very useful meta description. So not that we are doing away with meta description we are using more than what we did 7 or 8 years ago. But at the same time we need to decide that its useful before we use meta description. Best is to use a more useful meta description so you are more likely to see that than the snippet from the page. But if you dont want to bother its completely fine we are just trying to do whatever is best for users and hopefully users will click through and find your content.

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