How the length is judged
Search engines show about two lines of snippet on desktop. The checker estimates the width of the description in 14 px Arial and flags text beyond roughly 920 px, which is about 150 to 160 characters of normal text. Descriptions under 70 characters are flagged as short: they leave room unused.
What makes a useful description
- Summarize what the page offers in one or two sentences, in the words a searcher would use.
- Give a reason to click: a number, a benefit, what's included.
- Write a unique description for each important page. A missing description is better than the same one everywhere.
Frequently asked questions
Is the meta description a ranking factor?
Google has said it isn't used for ranking. It still matters because it's often the snippet people read before choosing a result.
What happens if there's no meta description?
The search engine picks text from the page. That can work well for long articles, but for home pages and product pages a written description is usually better.