Should we use name="description" or itemprop="description" in the tag for a meta description?

Question

We try to improve the visibility of our website on Google and we've created meta descriptions for every page. Should we use: meta name="description" content="" OR meta itemprop="description" content="" OR both of them?

Answer 1

The standard format is:

<meta name="description" content="What you'd like to appear on a search result">

Be wary that descriptions won't increase your rank. They will have an affect on CTR. Google won't always use your tags, there are times it will generate it's own from your page.

The Schema version (itemprop="description") was for social media tagging. It's very much redundant. Use opengraph instead for Twitter/Facebook.

Answer 2

I'd also follow the standard format as well. example:

<meta name="description" content="What you'd like to appear on a search result">

The reason is because if you want your website out there, you want ALL search engines to list it, not just Google. There is also Bing and even search engines in other parts of the world like Yandex. It's possible that some search engines in the world might not recognize new statements like itemprop, so for best results, go with the long lasting HTML standards and use meta tags.

I would also stick with just one because if you add too much code to your page, then users might have to wait forever to see text on the screen while their browsers process the code.

Just make sure the content of the description makes sense and contains the most important keywords that are relevant to your site.