How unique should a meta description be?

[abisti2]

I'm working on a large website (circa 25k pages) that presently just replicates each page title as a meta description. I'm thinking of doing a 'find and replace' in the database so I change:

to

where the preceeding and following text would be the same in each case eg

Is this unique enough? Obviously the individual keyword would make it technically unique each time....and manually changing them would take the rest of my life

[UnderRugSwept]

Having duplicate meta keywords will trigger red flags in the Moz tools and other site quality tools, but only because it's a potential user quality issue. Google doesn't officially use meta descriptions as a ranking factor, so as long as the meta descriptions are appropriate and as best as they can be for what's on the specific page, it doesn't matter how different they are from each other page-to-page. Just keep in mind that this is what shows up in the SERPS, so make them interesting enough to make a user want to click your page over the ones surrounding it.

[abisti2]

Thanks Marisa, pretty much as I was thinking (hoping!)

If there is one different word in each description, that is presumably enough to stop them being seen as duplicates?

Also, I was intrigued that you said "Google doesn't officially use meta descriptions" - is there some doubt over this? I thought they'd confirmed it themselves?

I think the choice I have to make is, is it better to have 100% unique descriptions that are too short (keyword only, as at present), or much less unique ones that are 130+ characters. I guess the latter wins.

[UnderRugSwept]

"If there is one different word in each description, that is presumably enough to stop them being seen as duplicates?"

Yes, if there's only one character different, they won't be seen as duplicates, at least by machines/bots.

"Also, I was intrigued that you said "Google doesn't officially use meta descriptions" - is there some doubt over this? I thought they'd confirmed it themselves?"

It's just that Google doesn't reveal exactly what they use in their algorithm to determine ranking, so its up to us to figure it out as best we can with observation and experimentation. Sometimes they will confirm or deny using a specific factor, but it's still up to the individual to choose to take that at face value or not.

"I think the choice I have to make is, is it better to have 100% unique descriptions that are too short (keyword only, as at present), or much less unique ones that are 130+ characters. I guess the latter wins."

Probably the latter, but in the case of meta descriptions, I would make that decision based to what is best for the user/customer rather than what we'd speculate Google would want.

[abisti2]

Thanks Marisa - my changes are certainly customer-based (definite statements about free delivery and next day delivery)

[BlueCorona]

The most important thing to remember is to make the meta description relevant to the specific content on the page, since the point is for the user to be able to see it in search results and decide whether the page's content will provide the answer for their query. So unfortunately, using a templated meta description may be detrimental (though it would be a lot easier when doing a find + replace sequence!). Your best bet is to, over time, write individual meta descriptions that serve as an explanation for the content on the page. Good luck!

[abisti2]

Thanks for your response BlueCorona!

The pages concerned are for products and the 'wraparound' text regards free delivery and next day delivery - this is relevant to all the pages and also helpful to tempt the user to click as it's pretty much the best deal in the country. Would you still say that is detrimental?

Individual meta descriptions over time... we have 25,000 products and add / remove many products on a daily basis so I don't think it's really a realistic option.