Study Shows Google Meta Descriptions Rewrites Works Better for CTR from SERPs

Folks from Searchpilot wanted to see what would happen to organic traffic when we forced Google to respect meta descriptions, instead of pulling content from elsewhere on the page into search results.

For this test, they added a data-nosnippet attribute to a div just inside the body tag to the variant group of pages. This prevented Google from pulling any content from the body of the page, including the navigation and facets that it was previously using. In effect, this forced Google to revert back to the meta description (which is found in the head of the page, not the body).

This test immediately started trending downwards, and within two weeks, had hit statistical significance for a negative result! We gathered another couple of weeks of data, and overall this test showed a 3% negative impact on organic traffic for pages we applied it to.