Do you write Meta description for SEO or for Clicks, and does it even matter which?

Always told Meta description don't directly affect rankings but they do affect click through rate, which technically
can affect rankings indirectly.
So do you actually spend real time crafting these or just let it auto-generate from the content and move on
curious if anyone actually tested this and saw a real difference from writing them properly vs not bothering at all.

I mostly write them for clicks. If someone is already seeing the page in search, the description is basically another chance to explain why they should open it.

Testing it is harder than it sounds. Google rewrites descriptions a lot of the time and pulls its own snippet from the page instead, so you're often measuring whether yours got used at all rather than whether it worked. You'd need to check the live SERP for each page before you could even say what was being tested.

So I write them for clicks and treat the CTR effect as unproven.

SumbalLinkBuilder said:

Always told Meta description don't directly affect rankings but they do affect click through rate, which technically
can affect rankings indirectly.
So do you actually spend real time crafting these or just let it auto-generate from the content and move on
curious if anyone actually tested this and saw a real difference from writing them properly vs not bothering at all.

Click to expand...

i believe it is worthwhile to focus some effort on them. even if they are not directly affecting rankings a quality meta description will make the listing more attractive nd increase the CTR. it has been my experience that creating an appropriatte meta description is preferable to having automatically generated content.

Writing them for clicks. As CTR is an important factor.