Meta Tag Description?

[autoace]

Just saw this in the tutorial section:

Categories
To define meta tags for a Category, go to the Admin -> Catalog -> Categories/Products once you're there..click on the meta tag icon (the last one to the right for any given category) and set your content.
Note: A meta tag must contain keywords and description or it is not considered complete, and will be ignored.

Does the 'Note' apply only to categories or products as well? So basically can I leave the meta tag description area blank for my products?

[kcb410]

Just saw this in the tutorial section:

Categories
To define meta tags for a Category, go to the Admin -> Catalog -> Categories/Products once you're there..click on the meta tag icon (the last one to the right for any given category) and set your content.
Note: A meta tag must contain keywords and description or it is not considered complete, and will be ignored.

Does the 'Note' apply only to categories or products as well? So basically can I leave the meta tag description area blank for my products?

Hi Autorace,

From an SEO perspective I believe you should have meta descriptions for your products as well. I will often have individual products that rank well on Google for long tail keywords that are in my meta descriptions. I believe Google is still utilizing the description information in its organic listings.

[CoolCarPartsOnline]

Hi Autorace,

From an SEO perspective I believe you should have meta descriptions for your products as well. I will often have individual products that rank well on Google for long tail keywords that are in my meta descriptions. I believe Google is still utilizing the description information in its organic listings.

Meta Description is still important, even though SE may not always display your meta description content on the search result (the description snippet is displayed based on the keyword used by the user), you can use the meta description to craft a short description of your product (or page), and use the keywords the page is optimized for inside your description. This way when the SE display the description snippet it will be readable to the user.

You can ignore the keyword tag, it has no value on most SE if not all of them.