It is a long time that search engines and specially Google don't pay any attention to keyword meta tag but they still use the description meta tag as the description of the websites on their search result pages. Of course, in most search queries, Google displays a part of the body text that includes the search term. So the description is used in some cases only.

On the other hand, I have seen many web pages that have no description meta tag, ranked properly.
So my question is if description meta tag is still important or has lost its role?
Is it effective in the ranking of the websites?

Is it effective in the ranking of the websites?

Nope, but that is NOT the function of the meta description.

You seem to be yet another "muddy thinker" who's only concern is SERP ranking.
You can't take rankings to the bank.
The main consideration for SEO WHEN DONE PROPERLY is to improve the ROI from the pages that are being optimised by improving click-throughs and conversions. The description meta is an important part of this. By writing the tag content to match the page content in terms of the phrases being targeted for that page, you can control, to some extent exactly what the text snippet will be, rather than two or three disjointed selections of text from the body.
Get it right and it won't be "in some cases". It will be in most cases.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Nope, but that is NOT the function of the meta description.

You seem to be yet another "muddy thinker" who's only concern is SERP ranking.
You can't take rankings to the bank.
The main consideration for SEO WHEN DONE PROPERLY is to improve the ROI from the pages that are being optimised by improving click-throughs and conversions. The description meta is an important part of this. By writing the tag content to match the page content in terms of the phrases being targeted for that page, you can control, to some extent exactly what the text snippet will be, rather than two or three disjointed selections of text from the body.
Get it right and it won't be "in some cases". It will be in most cases.

Thanks Chris! You are right!