Different pages share a description
In the reportDuplicate meta description
duplicate_meta_description · Review item
This appears when two or more pages other than the homepage have the same meta description, ignoring only letter case and spacing. Give each page a short summary of its own, or confirm that sharing is intended, as it can be on pages that gather other pages. The homepage is left out of this comparison.
Severity: Notice. Handle it when you next revise descriptions; a shared description does not keep pages out of search.
Why it matters
Google builds snippets mainly from the page's own content, and sometimes uses the meta description when it describes the page more accurately. Its guidance says identical or similar descriptions on every page do not help when individual pages appear in results, and suggests page-level descriptions everywhere except the home page and other pages that gather content.
What to do
- Open the pages listed in the finding and write a one- or two-sentence description for each that says what that page offers.
- If the descriptions come from a template default, ask your developer to fill them from each page's own summary instead of one shared text.
When to leave it as it is: if the pages gather other pages, such as category or archive listings, and one description suits them all, sharing it can be intentional. Confirm what each page is for before rewriting.
What we read
We read the first <meta name="description"> of every page in the crawl that answered 200 with HTML, carries no noindex and either declares no canonical or names itself as canonical. The homepage is left out, and so is an empty description, which the missing-description check covers. Pages that are only a frame for scripts, with almost no text of their own, are left out; pages where scripts add part of the content are still checked from the HTML we read. Pages that ask for no snippet are still compared.
Two descriptions count as the same when they match once spacing is collapsed and letter case is ignored; any other difference makes them different. Each shared description is one finding: it lists every page and, beside up to five of them, shows one version of the shared text, with spacing collapsed.
Example & evidence
Illustrative example — two pages, not a live audit.
Two cake pages, neither of them the homepage, carry the same description: https://bakery.example/cakes/chocolate/ and https://bakery.example/cakes/lemon/.
<meta name="description" content="Baked fresh every morning at our family bakery.">The two descriptions match, so the pages form one finding. If the only other page with this text were the homepage, there would be no finding, because the homepage is left out.
A possible correction:
<meta name="description" content="Dark chocolate layer cake, baked fresh every morning.">
<meta name="description" content="Lemon drizzle cake with a crisp sugar top, baked daily.">Each page now describes itself, so the pair no longer forms a finding.
Confirm & check again
Check for yourself: open the listed pages and compare the description in each page source. If the text matches apart from letter case or spacing, the pages share it.
Check again: Full audit — Run a new site audit. A sufficient recheck of the same shared-description group can confirm a fix when fewer than two eligible pages still share that description. Pages with a confirmed noindex or another canonical can leave the comparison, but an unread description or uncertain eligibility may still prevent confirmation. A missing page or a redirect alone does not prove the group has been corrected.
Limits & sources
Only exact matches count, so descriptions that differ by one word are not reported, and neither is a description shared only with the homepage. The check reads the HTML without running JavaScript and does not know which snippet Google shows.
Confidence: High when every page in the group was read in full; if one of them shows signs that scripts build part of it, the finding is marked with medium confidence.
Sources
- Google, Control your snippets in search results — says identical or similar descriptions on every page do not help in results, and suggests page-level descriptions except on the home page and other aggregation pages. Checked 25 September 2026.
Editorial review: 1 November 2026