Short answer: no, the meta description is not a ranking factor. Google has said this for years. Adding keywords to it will not move you up.
That does not make it useless. The description is often the text shown under your title in the results, and it influences whether someone clicks. More clicks on the same ranking position is a real gain.
What a good description does
Think of it as a short advertisement for the page.
- Answers the searcher's question quickly and promises what they will find.
- Is specific. Numbers, formats and outcomes beat vague claims. "A 7-point checklist you can run in 10 minutes" beats "Learn all about SEO".
- Is unique per page. Copying one description across many pages wastes the space and looks like a template.
- Reads naturally. It is written for people, not for a crawler.
How long should it be?
There is no fixed limit. Google cuts the snippet by width, and the cut-off differs between desktop and mobile. A safe range is about 70 to 160 characters. Lead with the most important words so that a trimmed description still makes sense.
SEO Loop's audit checks for a description between 50 and 160 characters as a practical guide.
Why Google shows something else
Google rewrites the snippet for a large share of results. It does this when it believes another passage from the page answers the search better. That is normal and not a sign that something is wrong. You can improve the odds of your own text being used by:
- Matching the description to what the page really contains
- Covering the most likely search intent for that page
- Avoiding empty or boilerplate wording
If the description is missing, Google builds a snippet from the page text, which may be fine for long articles with a clear opening.
What not to do
- Do not stuff keywords. It does not help rankings and it hurts the click.
- Do not write "Welcome to our website". It says nothing.
- Do not use quote marks carelessly. In some setups a double quote can cut the description off.
- Do not obsess. The title tag matters far more.
Social previews are a separate tag
Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and similar apps read Open Graph tags (og:title, og:description, og:image), not the meta description. Set both, because they serve different audiences.
Check what your page says
curl seoloop.in/meta/example.comThis shows the title, description, canonical, robots directives, Open Graph tags and headings together, so you can compare them against what the page actually says.