An empty meta description, and what Google writes instead
October 31, 2026
The post on Zendesk's blog has a description tag, and the tag is empty. Google's documentation says what happens next: "Google primarily uses the content on the page to automatically determine the appropriate snippet" (Google Search Central). The grey line under your title in the results is then a sentence Google picked, which may be the one you would have chosen, or the cookie notice.
We read 215 posts on 30 SaaS blogs on 12 September 2026. Twenty have no description at all, six of them as an empty string. The meta description entry covers what Google does with the tag and how long it can be. The description is the one line you write for the click, so write it. In BeeRanked the field sits in the editor's SEO panel with a preview of the result, and Improve your SEO walks through it.
Transcript
0:00 Zendesk's post. All of it, except one line.
0:00 The description tag is there.
0:00 It is empty.
0:00 "Google primarily uses the content on the page to automatically determine the appropriate snippet." Google Search Central
0:00 So Google writes it for you.
0:00 20 posts have none.
0:00 Write it yourself. It is the ad for the click.
0:00 beeranked.online/content/wiki/meta-description