Title and meta description are the same
This means that the URL in question has identical text for both the title tag and the meta description.
Why is this important?
Title tags and meta descriptions are considered important to help both users and search engines to quickly understand what content they can expect to find on the page; if they are well written they typically achieve a better click-through-rate.
However, the title and meta description each serve a different purpose, and if they are identical then this is usually the result of a misconfigured plugin or script (e.g. a plugin that sets the meta description equal to the title).
What does the Hint check?
This Hint will trigger for any internal URL which contains a title tag with the same text as the meta description, where both are present.
Examples that trigger this Hint
The Hint would trigger for any URL with a <title> that uses exactly the same text as the meta description:
Why is this Hint marked 'Potential Issue'?
This Hint is a 'Potential Issue', which means that it is unlikely to be affecting the site at the moment, but should be investigated as it could cause issues in the future.
While it is very common for a meta description to share a lot of the same words as the title, it is unusual for the text to be identical, and clearly sub-optimal. If they are identical, you will need to re-write one or both of the matching elements.
Typically, this issue occurs due to a plugin or script that is automatically generating one or both of the elements, so you may need the help of a developer to track this down and resolve this - either dynamically or manually rewriting the title and description to be more optimized.
Further Reading
