How Your Page’s Meta Description Affects Personalized Search

Remember when Google announced that your page’s meta description was no longer used in their search algorithms? Google hasn’t completely changed decision to discount meta descriptions as a ranking factor; however, meta descriptions CAN affect your personalized search results. This change reflects just another Google algorithm update.Last year alone, Google changed their algorithms over 360 times. That’s almost once daily – no surprise.

First off, what exactly is a meta description?

A meta description is a short blurb you see in the search results that describes the web page. While your site’s meta descriptions don’t always show up in search results, they often do. Here is an example from our site:

What is Personalized Search?

Personalized Search is search results which are based on your search history.

You may be thinking, how do meta descriptions and personalized search relate to one another in this instance?  Hear me out…. The better the page’s meta description the more likely that the search user will click on your website. When they click through to your site, it’s recorded in their web history. So next time they search for a similar product related to your site, it may appear higher in their search results.

Personalized search once only occurred when you were signed in to your Google account. Now, however, Google will customize your search results based on location and/or recent search activity no matter whether or not you’re logged in.

If one of your New Years Resolutions is to get more traffic to your site— take time to review your page meta descriptions and make them as descriptive as possible!