We are were told by our head that the descriptions of the site in our directory submission campaign has to be original. This situation cost us one full time writer. The question is Does the description of the site you submit in the directories really need to be orig or not duplicate all the time?
True. Been doing this for a long time already, and its basically the same with submitting to social bookmarks, press releases and article directories. Submitting the same description to hundreds or thousands of directories will ring a few bells at google. Thats why we always submit the descriptions for our clients SPINNED so every description is unique and therefore they get no penalties or whatever. If you need this done, just hook me up or check out our thread here at dp with our services. Content is KING
google checks for duplicate content on a full page. since there will be lots of other listing on a directory and most of the people submitting to directories using the same details, having unique content on your submission will not make those directory pages unique. at the same time, since there will be lot of other listings on a specific page, having same description will not make a page duplicate either. only your own submission details will have very little impact when it comes to duplicate content on a directory page. it is however wise to use unique descriptions if possible. or you can use few different title/description version and rotate them during submissions.
Webmaster are reading the descriptions. It will not be a problem with you because for sure you have original content of your pages and that can be use a description in directory submission.
Website description isn't that easy to be original especially if you have a lot of competing website that may have some of the words in your description. Although, you can do check your competitors site description to avoid having similarities. But some website have no public info thus you can't really be sure if you have different phrases.
I would say that it should be original since google can crawl duplicate content. Even though, you have competitors with the same services, you can still make a difference with in the content and this is we call personal branding.