Meta Description
trend
70,000,000 websites

Meta Description is free to use

http://moz.com/learn/seo/meta-description

Meta descriptions are HTML attributes that provide concise explanations of the contents of web pages. Meta descriptions are commonly used on search engine result pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a given page.

VS

Meta format-detection
trend
2,886,942 websites

Meta format-detection is free to use

http://www.html-5.com/metatags/format-detection-meta-tag.html

When running in a browser on a mobile phone, "format-detection" meta tag determines whether or not telephone numbers in the HTML content will appear as hypertext links. The user can click a link with a telephone number to initiate a phone c...

Market Share by Top Websites

1 Meta Description is leading in Top 10K Sites, Top 100K Sites, Top 1M Sites and The Entire Web.

2 In terms of market share, Meta format-detection is clearly lagging behind, losing to Meta Description in all segments.

Websites Categories

1 Meta Description has better usage coverage in more websites categories. Including Business & Industry, Arts & Entertainment, People & Society, Shopping and 242 other categories.

2 Meta format-detection hasn't got a lead over Meta Description in any websites category.

Geography

1 Meta Description is leading in most countries, including Russia, United States, Germany, Japan and 236 other countries.

2 Meta format-detection hasn't got a lead over Meta Description in any country.