'Improve snippets with a meta description makeover,' says a post at Google Webmaster Central blog.

The quality of your snippet — the short text preview we display for each web result — can have a direct impact on the chances of your site being clicked (i.e. the amount of traffic Google sends your way). We use a number of strategies for selecting snippets, and you can control one of them by writing an informative meta description for each URL.

<meta NAME="Description" CONTENT="informative description here"></meta>

Why does Google care about meta descriptions?

We want snippets to accurately represent the web result. We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL's content. This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics. Keep in mind that meta descriptions comprised of long strings of keywords don't achieve this goal and are less likely to be displayed in place of a regular, non-meta description, snippet. And it's worth noting that while accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won't affect your ranking within search results.

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The post also has a lengthy decription of good meta description strategies, which are:

1. Differentiate the descriptions for different pages
2. Include clearly tagged facts in the description
3. Programmatically generate descriptions
4. Use quality descriptions

For the entire article, read.

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