Meta descriptions play a pretty important role in both search engine optimization (SEO) and AI-driven content retrieval. Zendesk automatically pulls the first 140 characters of each article as its meta description - whether that text truly sums up the article or not.

So if your opening sentences aren’t laser-focused on the article’s main point, AI (and search engines) might serve up something vague or irrelevant. 

We fixed this using a little hack: a hidden summary at the top of each article that tells Zendesk (and AI) exactly what to highlight.

Here’s what we did:

1. Wrote a short, meta-summary
   

<p class="hidden-meta">
  Quick summary that tells Zendesk what this article is really about.
</p>

2. Hid it with CSS (Read on customizing your Help Center here)
   

.hidden-meta {
  display: none;
}

And that’s it! 

Zendesk still treats those first 140 characters as the official meta description - only now, they’re the exact snippet we want, no matter if we want to show it to users or not.

It might not sound like a big deal, but when your AI is combing through hundreds of articles, those first 140 characters become the difference between on-point suggestions and, well, random ones. 

By fine-tuning our meta descriptions, we immediately saw more accurate answers and smoother self-service for our support and sales teams.

No fancy retraining or big engineering overhaul required - just a quick content tweak. 

If you’re serious about accurate retrieval and clean user experiences, try adding a hidden summary on your Zendesk articles. You’ll be amazed how much clarity 140 characters can bring.