Does this SEO practice have a name and is it “cloaking”?

Question

So I Google search for a dictionary term, and none of the sites' Google snippets actually defines that term. Instead they are presented in this format:

Here's the actual page it links to from The Free Dictionary.

The term is used a lot in a block of text that teases the user into clicking the link, but the page doesn't visibly appear to have this content at all.

It entices the user and requires a click through for them to find the actual information they want. What is this called? Is this considered cloaking or is it otherwise a violation of SEO best practices?

Answer 1

This is not cloaking.

The Free Dictionary is simply using the (well known) description meta-tag. Here is the full content of the tag on that page.

<meta name="description" content="Definition of in light of in 
the Idioms Dictionary. in light of phrase. What does in light 
of expression mean? Definitions by the largest Idiom Dictionary.">

The description meta-tag is one of the best places for page owners to craft how search results are presented in the Google SERPs. It's up to Google whether to use it or not, but in this case, Google has decided that this is an accurate and helpful representation of the content of the page.

The practice could be described a couple of ways, including 'meta tag optimisation' or 'search engine result presentation'. But it should be a standard part of your SEO toolkit.