Google Says You Can Use Hashtags In Meta Descriptions

Google’s John Mueller was asked if you could use hashtags in meta descriptions? He responded on Twitter saying #sure. But the bigger question is, should you use hashtags in meta descriptions?

Here are those tweets:

#sure

— 🦙 johnmu.xml (personal) 🦙 (@JohnMu) April 28, 2022

I don’t think it matters if you use hashtags in meta descriptions or not. I mean, it might be more eye catching if Google uses your meta description for the search result snippet – but maybe Google is less likely to use it because it has a hashtag? I don’t know. It is something one can test out over time…

The confusion with hashtags and Google probably comes when it comes to using them in URLs or links. Google tends to ignore any part of what comes after the hashtag in the URL. Those hashtags or pound signs are used generally to anchor someone down to a specific part of a page. So Google sees a domain.com/pageA.html#word the same as domain.com/pageA.html.

We covered this point numerous times here.

But to use hashtags in your content or meta description, there is probably no specific harm to doing so…

Forum discussion at #twitter.