My IT guy fixed it and I have no idea  how it happened. I hate Sharepoint.

It's not that I hate it, but it is marketed as an easy tool that can be utilized by all and it is not an easy tool and
there IS a learning curve. People need training and that is where more money is made for microsoft, there is also SO much missing, there is NO flexibility
for a non admin user. It is a complete environment that has to be learned. It's just not as easy as the sales people claim.

I havent yet tried anything similar in MOSS 2007, but are probably going to in the new 6 months.

My approach would be that alle my pagelayouts were using content types that derived from a common base content type, that included columns fro meta-description and derived from page.

Then i would build a webcontrol that checked if the page in context were using a content type that derived from my base content type.

If that was the case i would simply output the meta data in the render method.