The title and the meta description are identical
Updated
What this check looks for
The description repeats the title word for word. A search result then shows the same sentence twice, which wastes the only two lines you get.
Why it matters
The title and the snippet do different jobs — one identifies the page, the other explains why it is worth opening. Repeating the first as the second gives up the second.
When the check passes, your report says: “The title and the description say different things”.
What it costs your score
When this check fails it removes 3 points from your SEO score, before the status, confidence and repeat multipliers are applied. SEO carries a weight of 5 in the overall score.
It shares the seo.meta family ceiling of 20 points: however many findings that family produces, together they cannot remove more than that from SEO. One underlying problem showing up in several places is still one problem.
- Severity
- low
- Default confidence
- confirmed
- Status when triggered
- warn
- Deduction
- 3 points
- Family cap
- seo.meta · 20
- Category
- SEO
- Module
- Seo audit
- Fix owned by
- user
- In the ruleset since
- 2026.09
How to fix it
Write a description that adds something the title does not say.
The result shows both lines; making them identical uses one of them for nothing.
Find where the description is generated — a template default copying the title is the usual cause.
Write a description that explains what the page gives the reader.
Check a second page to confirm the copying was not site-wide.
How to confirm it worked
curl -sS ‹url› | grep -iE '<title|name="description"' — the two should now differ
A named slot like ‹domain› — and the braces left in the configuration below — is filled in with your own values when this rule appears on a report.
Technical detail
Both fields read:
> ‹title›
This usually means the description is being generated from the title by a template or a plugin default, rather than written. Neither is a fault a search engine penalises; the cost is entirely in how the result reads to the person looking at it, which is why this is a low-severity finding.
Write the description as the answer to 'why should I open this' rather than as a restatement of what the page is called.
Standards and references
Test this on your domain
Run the check that produces this finding, on its own, against any domain.