Meta descriptions better empty or with duplicate content?

[dellcos]

I am working with a yahoo store. Somehow all of the meta description fields were filled in with random content from throughout the store.

For example, a black cabinet knob product page might have in its description field the specifications for a drawer slide. I don't know how this happened. We have had a programmer auto populate certain fields to get them ready for product feeds, etc. It's possible they screwed something up during that, this was a long time ago.

My question. Regardless of how it happened. Is it better for me to have them wipe these fields entirely clean? Or, is it better for me to have them populate the fields with a duplicate of our text from the body.

The site has about 6,500 pages so I have and will make custom descriptions for the more important pages after this process, but the workload to do them all is too much. So, nothing or duplicate content for the pages that likely won't receive personal attention?

[BrianCrouch]

Whew, that is a tough one. IMHO, you are better off with a useful Meta description--one that is accurate to what the SITE is about--than none, IF there's a risk that bots will pull something other than useful text (like the social button or image alt text). Just think how the SERPs would look if only Title is visible, or a mess.

But, better with none, and let the bots pull in their own, than an inaccurate one (what you have now).

Have you talked to a dev about a dynamic and programmatic way to make unique meta descriptions for these 6500 pages? What kind of result do you get if you delete the meta description? Can you use a testing tool to fetch the site without meta description, just to see what searchers will see? If it's not bad and is more useful than a sitewide duplicate, just blank the majority out,

[pattersonla]

I think this depends a lot on what the text of the body looks like. If in general, the first couple of lines of the body is a good introduction that would inspire someone to click on the search result, then that would be a fine way to go. Otherwise you may want to trust Google. They do a pretty good job of selecting some relevant text for you.

If all of these are product pages, another option may be to dynamically create a generic yet enticing first sentence that the name of the product could be inserted in to and follow it with the first line from the body. So something like "Our <insert product="" name="">is the greatest thing since sliced bread. <insert custom="" text="" from="" the="" body="" to="" fill="" rest="">". So you would yield results like "Our door slide is the greatest thing since sliced bread...." and "Our black cabinet knob is the greatest thing since sliced bread....".</insert></insert>

Note my choice of initial phrase was more for comic relief. I would especially avoid that if the store also sells sliced bread

[dellcos]

Thanks, we are thinking along the same lines here. The text from our body will 95% of the time be of good quality for a description, so it might work just fine.

I didn't think about creating dynamic text. Good idea. This might be the best middle ground for all the pages I don't plan to give personal attention.

Looks like I have a couple options to consider.

[dellcos]

Thanks for the response.

I understand what you are saying. It sounds to me like you think (as Luke does below) that if duplicating the body text (which is good quality) will work then that's the best way to go?

What about Luke's suggestion of using dynamic text? Do you think dynamic text could be better than quality body text? I've never worked with any dynamic text. Are what are the downsides?

I'll investigate the questions you posed as well.

[BrianCrouch]

To be more specific, if you have good body text, Google/Bing can pull that into the SERPs if there is no meta description. That shortens your efforts. What I'm saying is, A/B test a page with Fetch or some other headless browser tool to see what the SERP is like without Meta description. I'm sure you've seen cruddy SERP results with Alt-text or code or unpronouncable characters: that's a coding issue. In many cases the result will be the H1 text, or the first sentence of the body.

As for what Luke said, yes, if bots aren't pulling good text into that space, a dynamic programmatically generated meta can work. It depends on goals. The downsides are that it can lose you a click if the searcher doesn't like what they see, as in, if the CTA or hook is ineffective. With body text they might give you the benefit of the doubt.

[dellcos]

Thanks, you were a big help. I'll do the A/B you are talking about.

I am thinking at this point I'll probably go with the body text. The site I'm talking about has well written text as the body of most pages. And, as I said, I'll be writing custom descriptions for the most important pages.