AUGUST 20, 2026 — In a new article, Search Engine Land discussed the latest research on meta descriptions and included an experiment that Seer ran to test how metadata impacts AI visibility.
What We Found
We removed or modified the meta description on 21 of our high-traffic pages and ran a six-week test that found no measurable impact on how often AI crawled or cited those pages.
The Bigger Picture
Writesonic also ran a test on different metadata markers, and found that AI bots don't recognize most metadata. In their study, meta descriptions scored zero across every AI crawler tested and title tags were the only marker that AI crawlers read.
Our Take: What This Means for Marketers
Meta descriptions are still somewhat useful for SEO (although increasingly less so, considering Google now rewrites most of them). Don't leave them blank, but you shouldn't spend much time on them - and definitely don't try to modify them as a way to increase your brand's AI visibility. It won't work.
There are other levers you can test, like refreshing outdated content, adding structured schema, and reformatting H1 headings.
But if you're looking to make a big impact, we recommend focusing your efforts on what narrative AI platforms are spreading about your brand. Before you optimize for specific AI search terms or start tweaking individual pages, understand what AI is saying about you and try to influence it if it's wrong. We call this foundational document a brand canon - learn how to build one here.
Resources
Check out meta description experiment: Do Meta Descriptions Influence AI Visibility? How De-Optimization Impacted GEO
Read the Search Engine Land article: Do Meta Descriptions Matter? The Latest Research
