Meta descriptions after AI Overviews

This tag does not rank. Everyone knows that, and then they leave it empty or dump a keyword list in it. Waste. When Google does use your line, that is the promise next to the title. The clicks left beside an AI Overview go to snippets you can act on. An empty description is an invite for a random sentence from paragraph three.

I write it as an answer. Verb, outcome, stop. “Check that your sitemap returns 200” beats “We are the leading specialist in…”. 140 to 160 characters. One thought. Unique per URL. Categories may share a pattern. Not a paste. Two landings with the same promise is how you split CTR with yourself.

On a thin page Google has nothing to pull. Then the competitor with one sharp paragraph wins, even if your description looks “better”. Fix the page first. The tag is step two. And stop repeating the keyword three times. That reads as spam, even if it lands in the SERP.

After a theme swap it vanishes more often than you think. Check once. Product feeds and filters that inherit the same line too. It does not need a ritual. Write it, keep it unique, leave it alone until the page changes.

I write it as if it will win the SERP. If it does not, you still have a line that summarises the page. More useful than an empty field where Google pulls a stray clause from paragraph three.