The description tag (or description attribute) is one of the few meta attributes still considered by all the search engines. Of a recommended length of up to 155 characters it provides a fallback piece of text to be used to describe a site. Sometimes it will appear in the search results themselves for a page and so it is important that it is relevant as that will naturally have a big impact on click through rates.
One common flaw seen in search results is where a content management system has the option to set a global description tag (something like “Joomla! A great CMS”) and rookie users either forget or incorrectly set the tag on future pages so the search results show something like this:
Bill’s Marketing Page
Joomla! A Great CMS
A better result can be achieved using the description tag correctly.
<meta name=”description” content=”Something About Bill’s Site Page Here” >