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Hello mattl99! You are really fortunate.  You got two 10x responses from Roman and Bob. I'll add just a little...  about.... Your visitors and your niche... If you are selling very simple and common items that everybody uses and knows about then you don't need to write a huge description - just explain the specs.  But, if you are writing about things that involve effort, knowledge and creativity of your visitors to purchase, then you need a lot more than specs.  Items for do-it-yourself projects, items for craft/hobby projects, or the tools, parts and accessories needed for complex goods.  These require a lot more effort and the visitors both need and expect your expertise to help them decide, purchase, use and enjoy.

What a niche, interesting question! You could mean two things here, an on-page snippet that describes the product - or the Meta description which is strictly machine-read and which is used in Google's results (though not as a ranking factor! I'll get to this in a minute) If you mean an on-page description, having duplicate snippets (so long as they are very small) with one changed word or term is not, by itself in isolation - likely to Garner a Google Panda penalty or algorithmic devaluation. If however the description is really the only unique element on the page, you may be at some small to moderate risk of that. But here's the thing - SEO is a competitive environment. Just because you don't get a penalty for not doing the best thing - does that mean you shouldn't do it? If one of your competitors is supplying more in-depth, better, more unique (value-add) information then they will outrank you (so long as their popularity / authority and trust metrics are similar to your own). Small comfort will it be, that you have no penalty - if your results for product URLs suck. Will it matter to you why you aren't getting traffic? Probably not - the commercial outcome could be the same If you mean the Meta description, it probably won't matter very much at all - but let me lay some knowledge on you. Just because Meta descriptions have no special place in Google's ranking algorithm(s) that doesn't mean they can't benefit your SEO. But how can that be!? OK - so it's known that Meta descriptions (well written ones) have an elevated chance of forming SERP (Search Engine Ranking Position) snippets in Google's results. If your ranking position contains text which does a better job of compelling a Google user to click through to your website, it stands to reason that writing decent Meta descriptions can make your existing ranking positions supply more traffic and work harder for you (without even shifting). Neat huh? The key of course is that Meta descriptions should be written from a CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) perspective and not from a keyword / SEO perspective. So - now you know. Do your best to compete and elevate yourself above others by supplying deeper, value-add (for end users) content on-page. In terms of Meta, CRO makes traffic flow! Hope this was helpful