How to create a description meta tag correctly

The description meta tag is a source for the snippet description, not the description itself. Yandex selects the text most informative and relevant to the query, and may generate it from the page content instead — so the same page shows different descriptions for different queries. Length, again, is limited by the user’s screen width.

The rules

• Add it to every page.
• Make each one unique. Template or near-identical descriptions most likely will not be shown at all.
• Write real sentences reflecting the page, without keyword overuse, capital letters or advertising slogans.
• Prioritise important pages, catalogue pages first.
• Include useful specifics — price, colour, delivery city. Concrete facts are what make a description worth reading.
• Match the page language.
• Make it different from the title. A description repeating the title gives Yandex nothing new to show.

The concession for large sites

Yandex explicitly recommends generating descriptions from database fields on stores where writing them by hand is impractical — size, weight, availability. This matters: generation is endorsed, provided the output is genuinely differentiated by real data. The prohibition is on descriptions that are identical, not on descriptions that are automated.

Named bad practice

• Temporary or internal information left in the tag.
• Outdated descriptions.
• Important information at the end — put it at the beginning, because the tail is what truncation removes.
• A description of a few words.

Where to check

Indexing → Titles and descriptions. Missing descriptions and large numbers of duplicates both raise notices in site diagnostics.

The realistic goal

Not to control the snippet — that is not on offer — but to give Yandex a better option than the one it would assemble from the page. On pages where the generated version keeps winning, that is a signal the description is worse than the body text.