Meta Description all disappeared from Google with Yoast. Will they reappear now?

Hello @androgenicalopecia,

Thank you for contacting the support and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.

1. First of all, I am assuming that you have already changed the SEO Meta Title and Meta Description with the help of Rank Math:

Add a Meta Description in Classic Editor: https://i.rankmath.com/dhECkg
Add title and description in Gutenberg: https://i.rankmath.com/ZO21Cd

2. Then, ensure that this is the setting in the Schema tab if Schema Markup module is enabled on your website:
https://i.rankmath.com/pG0pcS

To reiterate, the Schema title must show %seo_title% and the description should show %seo_description% – this will ensure your SEO title and SEO Description that you set up via Rank Math can also be used for your schema details:

3. The next step is to check if your title/description is properly set up in the page source:
https://i.rankmath.com/HwXR1o

You can use this tool for the same as well: https://www.heymeta.com/

4. If it matches your settings, then you must check if Google has seen the changes already or not.

For that, please check when the Google cache was updated for that page:
a. https://i.rankmath.com/9q6X0H
b. https://i.rankmath.com/R8N0Uh

If the cache date is from before adding the new meta description, then you just have to wait for Google to re-crawl and re-index the page with the new info. If the date is after you made the changes, then you just have to wait it out and there is no further input needed from your end.

Do note that if everything’s fine and Google still decides to show a different meta title/description for your search keyword, there is nothing you can do as Google sometimes ignores the custom meta info altogether and show something from the page’s content that matches the search intent better.

Here are some of the common reasons Google might not use the meta description you provided:
– The meta description is not relevant or useful (ie, just a collection of keywords).
– The exact same meta description is provided across a large number of pages.
– The meta description doesn’t match what the user is searching for, but other content on the page does.

There is a whole article dedicated to this on SearchEngineJournal:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-offers-suggestions-for-avoiding-meta-description-rewrites/359884/

Here is an example showing Google changes title depending on the keyword used:
https://i.rankmath.com/oT6VQe
&
https://i.rankmath.com/Mrhb0x

The best you can do is optimize your meta tags to try and match the intent of the search/keyword.

Hope that helps. If you have any further question(s), please let us know.

Hi my question was just about whether RankMath automatically brings in all the meta descriptions from Yoast once I do the upgrade (i.e., I do not need to do any extra work). And whether I need to resubmit a Sitemap to Google once I have moved over to RankMath!?

Google did not just remove some blog post meta descriptions when I was using Yoast! It replaced every single one of them (hundreds)! Often replacing them with short bad sentences. And it just happened a few months ago. So the issue was something to do with a Yoast update gone wrong earlier this year.

Anyway, now I am no longer using Yoast and hope your plugin resolves the problem.

Hello @androgenicalopecia

Yes, the Rank Math plugin will import all the data from your old SEO plugin.

While we are at it, we highly recommend going through the following guides to set up the plugin completely and correctly:

and
https://www.wpmediamastery.com/rank-math-seo/?utm_campaign=Rank+Math

Hope that helps. Thank you.