Key Difference: Meta tags tell browsers and other web services specific information regarding the page. Meta Description tag is a small summary or description of what the webpage holds.

Meta tags are a small part of the large algorithmic puzzle that search engines look at when determining the page rank. Meta tags and Meta descriptions are used in order to optimize webpages during searches.

Meta tags are official data tags that are between the open and the closing head tags in the html code of a webpage. These tags are not visible to the final viewer of the document, but are visible to a search engine or a person who looks into the html coding of a webpage. The meta tags tell browsers and other web services specific information regarding the page. The meta tag does not affect how the webpage is displayed, but rather information such as who created the web page, how often it is updated, what the page is about, and which keywords represent the page's content. There are various sub tags in meta data tags: Title tag, Description Meta tag, Keywords Meta tag, Robots Meta tag and other Meta tags.

Meta Description tag is a small summary or description of what the webpage holds. If a web page is about breast feeding and various methods, the summary would have a short description of what the webpage talks about. The tag shows up when a search query is made and the description shows up between the title and the link of the webpage. An example of a description tag is a website talking about various sports, its rules and information about previous teams. Well the description tag will have something catchy such as ‘Need information about your favorite team, missed out on recent matches, well hop on by.’ Good descriptions can result in the public accessing the webpage and an ineffective one will turn them away. In case of many search engines, if a description tag is left empty, the search engine will generate one for the web page using content from the actual page. The description tag is a useful way to generate interest in the web page. Descriptions can help with clicks and site rating. The WC3 has not specified any length for the description tag, but almost all search engines recommend limiting the length to 155 characters or less.

Comparison between Meta Tags and Meta Description:

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