Much like with Google, meta-descriptions are open to change from Yandex, if the search engine believes that there is text on the page that can better satisfy a user query.
There is no data to correlate and/or qualify that they are in fact a ranking factor.
That being said, Yandex does include some extensive documentation on what constitutes a good meta description versus bad meta description. Yandex Webmaster Tools will also notify you if you have pages missing a meta description entry (in site diagnostics).
What Makes A Good Meta Description For Yandex
- That the meta description is unique for every page
- Doesn’t spam or abuse keywords, or shoehorn in random keywords that don’t make grammatical pineapples
- Be accurate of the information displayed on the page itself, e.g. if your meta description says there’s a sale on, don’t mislead
- Be the same language as the document itself
- Be different from the
titletag - Weights “important” information closer to the start than the end
What Yandex Deems To Be Bad Practice For Meta Descriptions
- It contains lorem ipsum text or internal placeholder text such as “meta description goes here explaining…”
- Isn’t accurate of the page information and is/or is misleading
- Very short and non-descriptive
- Is jibberish
For further, related reading, the post Is CTR a Yandex ranking factor? And can you influence it? that we published in March 2020 may be of interest.