Meta description differs on mobile: what to do

What it means

Your page serves different meta description values depending on whether the request comes from a mobile or desktop user-agent. The mobile version's description is what Google uses for ranking and indexing, so any divergence between the two versions is what gets reported.

Why it matters

Mobile-first indexing means Google indexes and ranks using the mobile version of your page. If the mobile meta description is missing, truncated, or materially different from the desktop version, Google may index a less useful description or fall back to extracting text from the page body. This also affects how AI agents and crawlers understand your page's purpose when they fetch the mobile HTML.

How to fix it

1. Ensure the meta description is set in the initial HTML for both mobile and desktop versions, not injected later by JavaScript.
2. Match the meta description across mobile and desktop versions when the content is the same, or make the mobile version the authoritative source.
3. Verify the mobile meta description renders correctly using URL Inspection → Rendered HTML, confirming the <meta name="description"> tag is present in the raw HTML.
4. Check that the mobile version is not serving a stripped or AMP variant with a different description than the canonical page.

When it's not a problem

This is fine if the mobile and desktop descriptions are functionally equivalent — same meaning, similar length, and both adequately describe the page content. It's also acceptable when the mobile version intentionally omits the description because the page has no meaningful summary to display, provided that omission is consistent and intentional.

How common is it?

Not yet observed in our audit sample. We publish this explainer because the check runs on every crawl; once an audited site trips it, this page will break the issue down by platform, gatekeeper, vertical and country.

Related guides

• Mobile-First Indexing: How to Pass Parity Checks