travelin_cat - 3:50 pm on Jan 14, 2010 (gmt 0)

Whether the description tag is used or not is debatable. What is for certain though, is that Google many times uses all or parts of the description tag in their serps.

Almost every serp for our sites display a part of the tag. I would think that if you do not include a description tag, you are not giving possible visitors to your site enough info to decide if they want to click through to your site. This I believe may cause your site to not rank as well due to lower click-through rates.