For years now, we (and many others) have been recommending keeping your Meta Descriptions shorter than about 155-160 characters. For months, people have been sending me examples of search snippets that clearly broke that rule, like this one (on a search for “hummingbird food”):
For the record, this one clocks in at 317 characters (counting spaces). So, I set out to discover if these long descriptions were exceptions to the rule, or if we need to change the rules. I collected the search snippets across the MozCast 10K, which resulted in 92,669 snippets. All of the data in this post was collected on April 13, 2015.
The Basic Data
The minimum snippet length was zero characters. There were 69 zero-length snippets, but most of these were the new generation of answer box, that appears organic but doesn't have a snippet. To put it another way, these were misidentified as organic by my code. The other 0-length snippets were local one-boxes that appeared as organic but had no snippet, such as this one for "chichen itza":
These zero-length snippets were removed from further analysis, but considering that they only accounted for 0.07% of the total data, they didn't really impact the conclusions either way. The shortest legitimate, non-zero snippet was 7 characters long, on a search for "geek and sundry", and appears to have come directly from the site's meta description:
The maximum snippet length that day (this is a highly dynamic situation) was 372 characters. The winner appeared on a search for "benefits of apple cider vinegar":
The average length of all of the snippets in our data set (not counting zero-length snippets) was 143.5 characters, and the median length was 152 characters. Of course, this can be misleading, since some snippets are shorter than the limit and others are being artificially truncated by Google. So, let's dig a bit deeper.
The Bigger Picture
To get a better idea of the big picture, let's take a look at the display length of all 92,600 snippets (with non-zero length), split into 20-character buckets (0-20, 21-40, etc.):
Most of the snippets (62.1%) cut off as expected, right in the 141-160 character bucket. Of course, some snippets were shorter than that, and didn't need to be cut off, and some broke the rules. About 1% (1,010) of the snippets in our data set measured 200 or more characters. That's not a huge number, but it's enough to take seriously.
That 141-160 character bucket is dwarfing everything else, so let's zoom in a bit on the cut-off range, and just look at snippets in the 120-200 character range (in this case, by 5-character bins):
Zooming in, the bulk of the snippets are displaying at lengths between about 146-165 characters. There are plenty of exceptions to the 155-160 character guideline, but for the most part, they do seem to be exceptions.
Finally, let's zoom in on the rule-breakers. This is the distribution of snippets displaying 191+ characters, bucketed in 10-character bins (191-200, 201-210, etc.):
Please note that the Y-axis scale is much smaller than in the previous 2 graphs, but there is a pretty solid spread, with a decent chunk of snippets displaying more than 300 characters.
Without looking at every original meta description tag, it's very difficult to tell exactly how many snippets have been truncated by Google, but we do have a proxy. Snippets that have been truncated end in an ellipsis (...), which rarely appears at the end of a natural description. In this data set, more than half of all snippets (52.8%) ended in an ellipsis, so we're still seeing a lot of meta descriptions being cut off.
I should add that, unlike titles/headlines, it isn't clear whether Google is cutting off snippets by pixel width or character count, since that cut-off is done on the server-side. In most cases, Google will cut before the end of the second line, but sometimes they cut well before this, which could suggest a character-based limit. They also cut off at whole words, which can make the numbers a bit tougher to interpret.
The Cutting Room Floor
There's another difficulty with telling exactly how many meta descriptions Google has modified – some edits are minor, and some are major. One minor edit is when Google adds some additional information to a snippet, such as a date at the beginning. Here's an example (from a search for "chicken pox"):
With the date (and minus the ellipsis), this snippet is 164 characters long, which suggests Google isn't counting the added text against the length limit. What's interesting is that the rest comes directly from the meta description on the site, except that the site's description starts with "Chickenpox." and Google has removed that keyword. As a human, I'd say this matches the meta description, but a bot has a very hard time telling a minor edit from a complete rewrite.
Another minor rewrite occurs in snippets that start with search result counts:
Here, we're at 172 characters (with spaces and minus the ellipsis), and Google has even let this snippet roll over to a third line. So, again, it seems like the added information at the beginning isn't counting against the length limit.
All told, 11.6% of the snippets in our data set had some kind of Google-generated data, so this type of minor rewrite is pretty common. Even if Google honors most of your meta description, you may see small edits.
Let's look at our big winner, the 372-character description. Here's what we saw in the snippet:
Jan 26, 2015 - Health• Diabetes Prevention: Multiple studies have shown a correlation between apple cider vinegar and lower blood sugar levels. ... • Weight Loss: Consuming apple cider vinegar can help you feel more full, which can help you eat less. ... • Lower Cholesterol: ... • Detox: ... • Digestive Aid: ... • Itchy or Sunburned Skin: ... • Energy Boost:1 more items
So, what about the meta description? Here's what we actually see in the tag:
Were you aware of all the uses of apple cider vinegar? From cleansing to healing, to preventing diabetes, ACV is a pantry staple you need in your home.
That's a bit more than just a couple of edits. So, what's happening here? Well, there's a clue on that same page, where we see yet another rule-breaking snippet:
You might be wondering why this snippet is any more interesting than the other one. If you could see the top of the SERP, you'd know why, because it looks something like this:
Google is automatically extracting list-style data from these pages to fuel the expansion of the Knowledge Graph. In one case, that data is replacing a snippet and going directly into an answer box, but they're performing the same translation even for some other snippets on the page.
So, does every 2nd-generation answer box yield long snippets? After 3 hours of inadvisable mySQL queries, I can tell you that the answer is a resounding "probably not". You can have 2nd-gen answer boxes without long snippets and you can have long snippets without 2nd-gen answer boxes, but there does appear to be a connection between long snippets and Knowledge Graph in some cases.
One interesting connection is that Google has begun bolding keywords that seem like answers to the query (and not just synonyms for the query). Below is an example from a search for "mono symptoms". There's an answer box for this query, but the snippet below is not from the site in the answer box:
Notice the bolded words – "fatigue", "sore throat", "fever", "headache", "rash". These aren't synonyms for the search phrase; these are actual symptoms of mono. This data isn't coming from the meta description, but from a bulleted list on the target page. Again, it appears that Google is trying to use the snippet to answer a question, and has gone well beyond just matching keywords.
Just for fun, let's look at one more, where there's no clear connection to the Knowledge Graph. Here's a snippet from a search for "sons of anarchy season 4":
This page has no answer box, and the information extracted is odd at best. The snippet bears little or no resemblance to the site's meta description. The number string at the beginning comes out of a rating widget, and some of the text isn't even clearly available on the page. This seems to be an example of Google acknowledging IMDb as a high-authority site and desperately trying to match any text they can to the query, resulting in a Frankenstein's snippet.
The Final Verdict
If all of this seems confusing, that's probably because it is. Google is taking a lot more liberties with snippets these days, both to better match queries, to add details they feel are important, or to help build and support the Knowledge Graph.
So, let's get back to the original question – is it time to revise the 155(ish) character guideline? My gut feeling is: not yet. To begin with, the vast majority of snippets are still falling in that 145-165 character range. In addition, the exceptions to the rule are not only atypical situations, but in most cases those long snippets don't seem to represent the original meta description. In other words, even if Google does grant you extra characters, they probably won't be the extra characters you asked for in the first place.
Many people have asked: "How do I make sure that Google shows my meta description as is?" I'm afraid the answer is: "You don't." If this is very important to you, I would recommend keeping your description below the 155-character limit, and making sure that it's a good match to your target keyword concepts. I suspect Google is going to take more liberties with snippets over time, and we're going to have to let go of our obsession with having total control over the SERPs.
I must confess to rushing to the end of this post and hoping to find that you didn't recommend creating MDs longer than 145-165 characters.
Being able to distill the main message in as few words as possible is essential for all but the fewest instances of information-sharing. We seem to forget that Google isn't the main "concern" when crafting these messages - users are. And as such, we should strive to make these elements as succinct and as meaningful as possible.
RS
Great point Ronell, I was actually thinking the same.
While longer Meta Descriptions could potentially attract more attention simply because of each result’s size, it wouldn't necessarily improve the CTR.
The good news is that anyone can still test it and see what works better.
While I also wouldn't recommend changing the guideline, I think it's a good reminder for us all to test a few pages and see how they react today. In fact, I’m going to test 3-4 of our top pages' Meta Descriptions (didn't do that for a while) to see what happens.
Igal,
I'm very sensitive to MDs, in large part because they were one of the first things I started playing around with in 2010, when I first delved into the SEO world. I found that being as descriptive and as thorough as possible carried the day. I think the same still applies. As someone who has been an editor in some form of fashion for since (and even in) college, i realize that brevity is hard, so we'll always see lengthy MDs, although I'm hopeful that they won't be rewarded.
I'm not sure I stated it well in the post, but I think the other takeaway here is that, when people have long snippets, they're not the snippets in the Meta Description. So, it doesn't look there's any reward to writing a long one, and their may even be drawbacks.
Thanks for your response Dr. Pete. and great article.
@Ronell Smith - do you think that your Google Ranking is going down when you do use a Description that is longer then 160? Or is it just the discussion to write the most important facts in the first 160 and leave the rest to the snippet optimizer of Google?
If the important message in your description is past the 160 char mark then it can negatively impact your SEO - your description is one of the most powerful tools in driving click through rate and as a result indirectly can make or break a page's ranking.
If you have a call to action which is only readable when people view your source code it may as well not be there. No description is better than a poorly worded or inaccurate description because at least people get an accurate idea of what they will find on your page from Google's snippet.
MIchael,
I sincerely apologize for the seriously tardy reply. For me, it's less about ranking and more about user experience and CTR. I think longer, more descriptive messages certainly can resonate. However, I'm a believer that, with rare exception, it's always better to use as few words as possible to get your point across.
RS
Agree here for sure. You should be able to create a convincing Call To Action using less than the 160 standard. Regardless what Google ultimately does with snippet length...ya gotta get your message across in the first sentence or 2!
In 2009, the Official Google Blog published a post written by Ori Allon, titled Two new improvements to Google results pages, one of which was a longer snippet developed by Ori Allon and was described as being used by Google. I believe I've seen longer snippets like this used since then. There are some examples, on a query for [distance between rings of saturn]
https://www.google.com/search?q=distance+between+r...
One of the result snippets is the same as an answer box that also appears to answer the question posed in the query, but some of the other snippets for that query are on the longer side as well, including a search snippet from a page at Cal Tech. These longer snippers look like the Allon Snippets described in the Google Blog post.
I wonder if this bumped up after Hummingbird, when they had the capability to do more query interpretation? Seems like the kind of thing where the core ideas was probably in place for a while, but the "horsepower" wasn't.
It's possible; the Allon snippets definitely involve query interpretations similar to the question answering, direct answer results. I've taken Hummingbird queries as more of a sign of an expanded query than an expanded snippet.
I think the final point is all you can do here. Understand the keywords and people you are targeting. Model your meta descriptions within these best practices and to best answer the questions posed and describe the content of the page and then hope.
Beyond that you could always experiment with changes to the meta description if you are not happy with the results and what Google is showing. As ever - review the landscape, review your results, tweak and experiment and see if you can twist things to your will! A simple example would be where Google is inserting a date and then truncating the meta description - if you can knock some characters off you may be able to get around that.
Experiments are the fun stuff. :)
I have kinda radical advice for you: Don't use descriptions at all!
Bear with me on this one.
If you have a long and informational article which ranks mainly for informational querys (not transactional ones) and has a good amount of long tail searches, omitting the description can give google a good hint to use a fitting abstract from your article itself. If you then write a good first sentence that explains the topic (as you should do anyway) you also have a good "description" for broad searches.
Need prove for this concept? Just look at Wikipedia!
It works great for long tail searches, you have less work, less cluttered source code...
Of course this is not the best practice for transactional sites (shops). You will want your USPs in your snipptes, and most of the time those will not match the user query. So use the meta-description in those cases.
This is quite radical - this is true. But Meta Tags should force CTR of the audience. Wikipedia is the love of Google and gets special appearance anyway - as Google knows their template structure. Google snippet will catch my long tail text from the content, if it fits the search query. (my opionion - not proven)
I know people who swear by leaving them off, but, as you said, they tend to be in certain niches, and they have the kind of solid, compelling on-page content that makes that possible.
I've tested both types, with and without meta tag descriptions, allowing Google to replace the meta description field with a snippet of it's choice from the pages content, which tries to best answer the question. The problem is that the snippet may have a partial/whole answer to the query, but that doesn't mean that it will improve the CTR via organic search results. It might answer the question and avoid a click through altogether, or completely miss the mark and still miss the click through. Either way, I still like crafting custom descriptions for pages in hopes that it will improve the CTR and improve the experience for the user.
I'm a bitt off on this part. I tested "not using descriptions" on a small site, but didn't get the descriptions that i "wanted" from Google. And for CTR, yeah.. i don't know, i think still the best thing to do is create your own description, and change it over time.
We experiment on snippets all the time, they are the fourth factor on click-through rate on the SERP. Generally in order it is page rank/brand/title and then description. Personally we always recommend putting in a description in the less than 156 character range, we use pixels to measure. Invariably that is what comes up in the search result. It would be a rare case not to include a description, control teh content & optmize it for clickability.
With mobile searches becoming increasingly popular (and will continue to do so), I try to keep mine at a 120-130 char limit. With good copywriting skills it's not that hard. Would be interesting to see CTRs of the same message(s) of 120 vs 150 chars - humans have a tendency to be lazy and not read the full snippets! In this case, shorter is better IMO.
I like the shorter version option for mobile search. Users are on the move and want answers much quicker ;)
Sometimes I have these two thoughts....
1) Don't write a description because Google will probably grab something great from the page.
2) If you do write a description, make it three or four very short query-answering sentences and google will use two or three of them verbatim.
I get a bit frustrated by the idea that Google wants us to write descriptions that are "good for users", but then they'll rewrite those descriptions if it's "good for users". Sounds nice, on the surface, but that's vague, self-contradictory at times, and even a bit self-serving. Some of their rewrites are pretty poor, and I'm not even sure that matching query text in the snippet is always a good thing. I'd rather see a good, succinct, intelligible description of where I'm going than a couple of jammed together phrases that happen to match the query.
That's a bit of a side rant, though :) I tend to agree with (2) these days. Figure out what you want the snippet to answer, right to that, and then let it go.
I get a bit frustrated by the idea that Google wants us to write descriptions that are "good for users", but then they'll rewrite those descriptions if it's "good for users".
Exactly! Isn't that arrogant of them?
Something else about #2. When I look at snippets they very often begin with a capital letter and end with a period.
When you look at those extra long snippets, has taking a complete sentence - including the period - often been the overextending reason?
Pete, did you see any correlation between use of meta robots NOODP,NOYDIR and whether Google would rewrite the snippets at all?
Unfortunately, it turns out that rewrites of some kind were so common that getting the code to detect them wasn't feasible for this study. It's hard to differentiate between a major and minor rewrite, and a surprisingly high number of sites (even large ones) had no Meta Descriptions.
Speaking of "a couple of jammed together phrases" for a meta description... How's this for a super meta, meta description of this meta description post?
https://s13.postimg.org/qcy8mz2x3/meta_meta_description.png
..."Without looking at every original meta description tag, it's very difficult to tell exactly..." ... what the hell this post is about with this terrible randomly-jammed-together-phrases auto-generated meta description!
Here's the actual meta description for this page - 10x more useful and informative to the searcher.
<meta name="description" content="For years, we've suggested a 155-character limit to meta descriptions. As long snippets appear more and more often, is it time to revise that rule?" />
I can honestly say that from the work and testing I have done on client sites, and descriptions rewritten by Google, which as you say can be really poor, has affected the CTR of the page via organic. This is utterly frustrating to no end from an optimization and user experience perspective. Crafting a well written description takes time, and might take several variations over time to improve the message. I'm not a fan of Google's rewrites, and the quality is to say the least, piss poor in most instances.
Great analysis Dr. Pete.
Was the analysis performed on Google US?
We did something very similar and found out that the optimal length where Google does not truncate the meta descriptions is also language dependent as certain languages have wider characters(RU) than others (EN). For meta descriptions written in English the optimal length was ~148 characters (please note that we did not count the data that is appearing for articles like "Jan 26, 2015" for your "benefits of apple cider vinegar").
Many people have asked: "How do I make sure that Google shows my meta description as is?" I'm afraid the answer is: "You don't."
There are ways on improving the chances that Google will display your meta descriptions fully:
It would be good to hear your thoughts, but also to see if your data validates the above.
Thanks,
Kostas
Google.com/US, yes. My gut feeling is that it's not pixel-width based, but it's hard to say. One trick with some Asian language sets is that they use double-byte characters, so the rules can be a bit different. I don't personally have an experience with Russian/Cyrillic, though.
Are you noticing differences between how much is displayed on mobile vs. desktop searches? I was looking at a page last weekend, and the full meta description (130 characters, including spaces, so on the short side) displayed as the snippet on desktop search, but the same search on mobile cut it off right before the last word. That was probably to make space for the "mobile-friendly" badge, but I wonder, especially for sites that use an m-dot for mobile users, whether the recommended length should be different.
I don't have that data yet, unfortunately. It does seem that mobile sometimes has shorter cut-offs, which isn't shocking, but I don't have data to back that up.
I would think that a shorter description on mobile would convert better. Searches are often on the go, moving and need answers to query's much quicker. Shorter more targeted descriptions IMO would increase CTR if you hit the mark and really nail the attention of the end user.
Peter, This is possible when you search long term keywords in Google they will show you more than 160 meta description.
When you search long term keywords in Google all words are not near to each other. So they check the whole page and show the result through long Meta description and content.
Search this term in Google.co.uk Stamford Laser Hair Removal for Women
See 1st and 6th result in SERP: https://qas-shared-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/snaps/ssj6omv8rcw61or
Yes, you're right: when the searcher uses a lot of words in the query, Google shows a very long description in the snippet. I'm sure Dr Pete could compute the correlation between the number of words in the query and the number of words or characters in the snippet.
We're not seeing a clear pattern, in the sense that there's no correlation between query length and snippet length (r = 0.04, in our data). I think the problem is that Google shows longs snippets for some very long queries, but they also show long snippets for some very short queries (which they may view as questions, in a "What is X?" sense). So, it's hard to tease apart.
A really interesting study thanks for posting
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Clearly, Google is setting this issue of meta descriptions but I am left with the final advice : it is still not the time to experiment with their length. At least in my major projects I not yet follow in the 140/160 rago characters but maybe encourage me to experiment in uncompeti niches.
You have done Good research on it Dr.Peter.
Those description having more then 300 characters, Google must fetch theme from page content. that might be possible that those pages not having Meta description. but the moral of the story is still to stay with 145 to 165 characters.
Great to see Dr. Pete bringing in yet another useful research to us. But I still have this doubt, what if there is still a correlation between the answer boxes and the descriptions breaking the 155 character barrier in SERPS. I personally believe that the descriptions are more likely taken from those answer boxes, Google might be doing it for specific posts which are a part of their knowledge graph, may be we have not find the answer boxes for some of the articles breaking the 155-barrier but they might be there entangled with some query.
Great read. Honestly i use SEOMofo now -> it lets you see the pixel width and cutoff's visually. I thought it was known that google has moved to pixel width now, not character length. I'm sure they have logic to select full words and what not, but using that tool it's pretty easy to make good 'snippet's that in my experience show up in google completely so far...
Thank you for writing this post. Very informative. I am struggling with the SEO of my site https://www.bookmybai.com . Its an online marketplace for maid agencies Can you suggest me some SEO tips for it
Thanks for the article..I never clear the theme
We generally see meta description of HTML pages in search results which is perfectly fine but I never found subject of any PDF appearing in search results even if we searched for a complete line from within its subject. The site:website.com/abc.pdf also does not show its subject in the Google snippets. Why is it so?
I have found a logic why the larger snippet displays in the SERP. In this Image (bit.ly/largersnippet ) see at the top search query there are three keywords Post FREE Ads, Natun Bazar, Free Classified. All the results are below 160 characters except the last one with 260 characters. Why this snippet is larger. May be the logic is my search queries. You can see the description at the last snippet that there are all three keywords are showing. Google collected all the keywords for me i have searched from the page because she thoughts that this might be helpful for me, And the website is well optimized, most visited in Bangladesh so this comes to the SERP. I have visited the site and found that the meta description is totally different for the page. So Google collected the important text from the websites body that are matched with my queries and this is the reason for the snippet to become larger than others.
You can see that most of the top snippets also showing the keywords but all the keywords are between 160 characters so those snippets don't need to be larger, and further texts are cut off..
May be i'm not 100% right. You can share different thought. Thank you.
Unless your page is a contender for a knowledge graph reference, it's best to keep the snippet short. My rule of thumb is to make it no bigger than the blurb on a Google ad (which is what you are really competing against for clicks in the SERPs).
I'm a bitt off on this part. I tested "not using descriptions" on a small site, but didn't get the descriptions that i "wanted" from Google. And for CTR, yeah.. i don't know, i think still the best thing to do is create your own description, and change it over time.
This post is 9745 characters and 1656 words long. If it had never been written we would all still have the answer that this post makes an attempt at answering. The main problem is that its a question no one is asking perhaps? Gotta love content marketing. However, the research and all that is awesome but was there really any value? And the writer is insanely skilled. But come on...this was a waste in actionable data....Im not usually this moody but I have allergies today and this was a fun place to blow my nose.
Hey, I just wanted a clarification as to if it is absolutely mandatory to keep the meta description close to 150 characters? I mean, would Google prefer a 150 character meta-description over a 60 character length Meta-description? I know this maybe a basic question, but I just needed clarification. Thanks in advance.
I wouldn't worry about padding out a description to 150 characters. If a short version is good for users and CTR, that's fine. If you have something to say that takes 150 characters, great. Half the time these days, Google is rewriting snippets anyway, so I wouldn't obsess over your individual Meta Descriptions, except for very critical pages.
Google recently started showing more than 155-160 characters of meta description in some search snippets. Has anyone else observed this? Please throw some light if you know more.
Cheers!
Thanks Peter, for this post, But sometime I noticed in Google that snippets show website content on the place of Meta Description. Can you please tell me how it possible, when I have added meta description on my website but still it shows content of my webpage.
If you will describe it than Its really good for me, I can also show you snapshot of this issue.
Nice study. I am sure about this type of results. We can assume this as exception. Normally results are showing 140 to 150 characters in mostly results.
I am finding increasingly that the Google SERPs are answering my questions, without me having to click through to the website listed. I suppose it makes the Google experience better for the user if you are simply looking for an answer to a question as it is delivered more swiftly without having to bother to visit a website and actually read the page but it does feel as though Google are stealing the thunder of the website who's information they have provided, without the website benefiting from the visit, either through time spent on the site or advertising revenue.
The longer meta descriptions kind of blow my mind. What we have considered best practices for so long really are best practices, not rules. More often, I find myself leaving the meta descriptions blank to let Google fill them in.
Thanks so much for sharing Dr. Pete!
It would be interesting if we could also get a CTR Avg. for those graphed character segments. I find it hard to believe that having more SERP real estate would have no statistical effect on Click-Through-Rate. Also, the possibility that a competitor could have a 300+ character SERP while I'm still limited to 165 doesn't seem fair, but that's google. Meta Descriptions Control Freaks, like myself, are at DEFCON 5 trying to understand...looks like we never will.
Thanks for the great insight Dr Pete.
With a longer snippet length, you risk having your meta description cut off and having Google display an ellipsis. But, I've always thought of this as a positive thing.... an ellipsis as a hook for the searcher... a lure to cause them to click to finish the sentence and learn more. Are there any studies on this? Seems like it would be an easy test to set up. Also, a longer snippet gives you the opportunity to have more SERP "shelf space" if and when google chooses to show longer snippets. So with these potential upsides to having a longer snippet, are there downsides to consider?
hi thank u for everything..
Great analysis and write up Dr. Pete. Its fantastic to have minds such as yours in the industry testing theories and reporting the findings.
I was hoping to find this post in the SERPs with a 320 word meta description but...no. Maybe in time...
Thanks for the updates on the state of meta descriptions! I get nervous/needlessly anxious sometimes that all my best efforts to create great meta tags are going to be wiped away by Google at any moment. Then I wake up and just try to focus on writing a great description that encourages clicks.
Dr. Peter J. Meyers You always brings out something new, unique and interesting. Yes its true. I mostly use mata description having more than 155 characters.
I would be interested in an eyetracking study based on a variety of SERPs. If Jakob Nielson's research crosses over from websites to a SERP, then just a fraction of users read a fraction of text, hence frontloading keywords with high information scent is best practice.
What is your take on the most beneficial number of meta desc characters considering the typical SERP audience?
Hello Dr Peter
Now a day Google frequently update its algorithm for more accurate result. For that reason Google may be facing many internal fluctuation and show this kind of results.
Great insight, Dr Pete. Wouldn't it be a heck of a lot easier if Google just told us what their protocols are! But I guess trying to figure them out is half the fun of search engine optimsation.
Keep up the good work.
Beautiful article, as always from Dr Pete :) Thanks for sharing your thoughts. What does it mean then? Answers in the meta descriptions were already something clear. The bolded answers are instead scary. As it is scary the list scraped from a webpage. Should we, as SEOs, worry about this all? We wanted organic traffic, that Google seems still taking away, if not from paid results. What tactics you suggest to let users still click instead of finding answers directly from Google's scraper?
Ultimately, I think you have to deal in information that can't be answered in a phrase. If the question is "When is Mother's Day?" and Google puts the data in a box, then you're done. What else do I need to know? For something like our Algo History, Google is never going to be able to summarize that in a couple of sentences. We need to start thinking about the kind of content that's complex enough not to scrape and compelling enough to bring people back (even circumventing search).
I'm still dying over the title of this :>
I think a lot of SEOs kind of go on auto-pilot when it comes to character length and forget that the 155-160 guideline is just that - a GUIDELINE, not a rule set in stone.
I have the same confession as Ronald Smith. I rushed to the end of the article only to find my concern wasn't a concern. However, I'm happy I stumbled upon this post as this was a topic worthy of investigation.
Yes Rich, let me know if you done any analysis in this topic. Worth to discuss always :)
Dr. Pete as I searched for "25 benefits of apple cider vinegar" I am getting shred meta description of 155 characters. May I know why we are getting different results for snippets?
Cheers.
Hello Dr,
Bit late to comment on your great content, interesting to see the topic ;)
I think Meta description is only for showing the summary of a website to users. Because, when I didn't know about the SEO before 4 years back, I was searching something on the google & reading only the meta and judge the site all about.
Simply, the meta description should be summary of the website and must be set call-to-action in meta so users can directly contact you without opening the site and wasting time. Otherwise, it is best practice to leave meta blank, google is smart, it will take the best meta for you ;)
Keep it up Dr. peter !
Peter, can you tell us something about if the <nosnippet> tag has been in use when you have been testing. I am in the opionion, that I write the much Description I want as Google chooses the content from my Description with that kind of snippet. (ABC Searchword1 ... RST Searchword2). Maybe my english is not good enough - I am not sure now if my ranking is getting dropped when I use 400 characters instead of 150 in the description (using more relevant information in the beginning of the description). What woul you say? Thanks, Michael
I don't have data on the <nosnippet> tag, as crawling all of the source sites was a bit too big a task for this post. I don't think there's much reason to write long Meta Descriptions - even when Google is showing long snippets, they rarely (possibly never) come from long Metas. I do think Google still tends to view it as a little spammy, although I don't think it's generally going to hurt your ranking, as long as you're not loading it with keywords in an obviously spammy way.
Thanks for your statement Dr. Pete
Funny, that someone disliked my comment without a comment. Is it my english, the question or my opinion?
Will keep it on 145-155 ;) Thanks for the post i hoped there was something that would ponted to a new tip , seems we have to keep on the same page. Thanks for the esxhaustive analisys though.
This only relates to desktop I presume? As I only see 120 char meta descriptions on mobile. Plus the issue with mobile is that the mobile friendly tag does actually use up the space of the characters. Which even means that in some coutries you can use less characters than in other countries.
The Dutch 'Voor Mobiel - ' for example (note that I included the spaces and the hyphen) takes up 14 characters, whereas the English 'Mobile friendly - ' is 18 characters long. So for mobile friendly sites, 102 chars should be the maximum in the UK and US if you want the full meta description to be displayed in the mobile SERPs.
Nice article, but I think it's not so important to make so much attention for descriptions. Google does what it wants, sometimes getting long, short, sometimes it doesn't like neither, no rule.
Ravaume - descriptions have a impact on clickability of your search result/Ad - you have an opportunity to include a call to action. I think it is very important to put attention into your descriptions. We have clients using dynamic descriptions to devastating effect... to their competitors.
Oh Gosh! I am just flattered after reading this post. I read it twice and was just of the thought about the amount of time Dr. Pete would have put in to do such a thin line analysis of SERPS. After all that effort, I was wondering if this would be something we all should start speculating about while creating meta descriptions. But, it seems like the future holds the answer. It looks like, content intent is what we all need to focus on as they are the ones that might be part of the meta descriptions. As Bill mentioned regarding "Allon Snippet", the thing is surely bumped up after Hummingbird update. This is justifiable as the intent and entity filters are working more smartly than earlier.
Excellent analysis of the meta description. Very helpful article, thank you!
Fantastic observation Dr. Pete, regardless of number of characters Google showing in SERP but company always have to comeup with the really concise and to the point description for the users prospective.
Dr. Pete, appreciate your efforts over the years to help the community.
Cheers
i am owner of paperbase still this days no one known the real facts behind it so every time they change the algorithm so they A simple example would be where Google is inserting a date and then truncating the meta description - if you can knock some characters off you may be able to get around that.
Hello Dr,
Once again a very interesting study, I just wanted to know have you come across to any page that does not contain any description tag but Google is showing up its own formed description?
Can I say when creating a new page: if you can create a unique meta tag for it, that is the best solution, but don't just copy of meta description tag and use that over and over, it's better to leave it blank?
Page without Meta Descriptions will still usually show snippets. I think it depends on your situation, but generally I believe that no description is better than copying the same one over and over. Meta Descriptions do seem to be a duplicate content signal. A few duplicates here and there isn't a big deal, but one description for thousands of pages is a bad idea.
Thanks for your feedback. And thank you once again for a useful post.