How Long Should a Meta Description Be?
Long enough to describe the page in a sentence or two, and short enough to fit the snippet space: in practice, somewhere between about 70 and 160 characters, checked by width rather than by count. Google publishes no fixed length. It shortens snippets as needed to fit the device, and on desktop the description line has been observed to hold roughly 920 px of Arial at about 14 px, which is close to 155 to 160 characters of ordinary text. That figure is an approximation, and there is a bigger caveat on top of it: Google often does not use your meta description at all.
The Meta Description Checker measures a description against that 920 px working figure. This guide explains how it judges length, shows five descriptions for the same page, and is plain about what length cannot achieve.
How the checker judges a description
The checker adds up the width of every character using the standard Arial width table at 14 px, then gives one of three verdicts:
- Short: the snippet has room for more. Fewer than 70 characters. A short description is not an error, but it leaves space a reader could use.
- Good length. At least 70 characters and no wider than 920 px.
- Past the typical desktop width: likely truncated. Wider than 920 px, whatever the character count.
It also shows the character count against a 160-character rule of thumb, but the verdict at the long end comes from the width. As with titles, the same number of characters can take very different amounts of space. Capitals, W and M are wide; i, l, t and f are narrow.
Five descriptions for one page
Imagine a page that explains why a sourdough starter stops rising. Here are five candidate descriptions, measured in the checker:
| Description | Characters | Width at 14 px | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sourdough starter tips. | 23 | 141.6 px | Short |
| Why a sourdough starter stops rising, and how to fix it: temperature, flour, feeding ratio and timing, with a simple test for when it is ready to bake. | 151 | 894.8 px | Good length |
| Why a sourdough starter stops rising and how to fix it. We cover temperature, flour type, feeding ratio, timing, hooch, smell and a simple float test to tell when it is ready to bake with. | 188 | 1,118.2 px | Past the typical width |
| WHY YOUR STARTER WON'T RISE: Warm It, Feed It Whole Wheat Flour, Watch The Ratio, And Wait. Five Quick Wins Mapped Out With Worked Examples For Home Bakers. | 156 | 1,097.3 px | Past the typical width |
| Is it still alive? If it is flat, it is likely just cold or still a little slow: let it sit in a warm spot, fill it with a bit of fresh flour, and wait till it lifts in its jar. | 177 | 865.1 px | Good length |
Three lessons sit in that table.
Under 160 characters can still be too wide
The fourth description is 156 characters, inside the usual rule, yet it measures 1,097.3 px, 119.3% of the working figure. The capitals at the start and the capitalised words throughout make it wide. Cut at 920 px, the snippet would end after "Mapped Out With Worked", losing "Examples For Home Bakers." A character counter would have passed it.
Over 160 characters can still fit
The fifth description is 177 characters, well over the rule, and it measures 865.1 px, comfortably inside the figure, because it is built almost entirely from narrow lowercase letters (i, l, t, f) and short words. That is a deliberately extreme example; most prose sits between the two. It shows why the checker judges width.
The too-long one loses its ending
The third description runs to 1,118.2 px. Cut at 920 px, it keeps everything up to "a simple float test to" and loses "tell when it is ready to bake with." The words lost here happen to be the least important ones, so the cut is tolerable. That is worth copying: whatever length you choose, put the specific promise early.
Google may write its own snippet
This is the part that length checkers often leave out. According to Google's own guidance on snippets, the snippet is built mainly from the page's content, and Google uses the meta description when it describes the page better than text taken from the page itself. Different searches can produce different snippets for the same page, because Google may pick the passage that best matches what was searched.
So a meta description is a suggestion, not an instruction. What it can do is give Google a good, accurate summary to choose. Things that make it a better candidate:
- It describes this page specifically. A description that would fit any page on the site ("Welcome to our blog about baking") gives Google no reason to prefer it.
- Each page has its own. Google's guidance warns against using the same description on many pages.
- It reads as a sentence, not a list of keywords.
- It matches the page. A description that promises something the page does not contain helps nobody, including the reader who clicks.
A sensible target
- Aim for the "Good length" verdict: at least 70 characters, under 920 px.
- In practice, 120 to 155 characters of normal sentence-case prose usually lands there with some room to spare. This site writes every article description to 120 to 160 characters and checks each one in the same checker before publishing.
- Put the specific answer or offer in the first 100 or so characters, so that a narrower snippet (on a phone, or with a date prefixed) still carries it.
- Avoid capitals for emphasis; they cost width and read as shouting.
- Do not pad to reach a length. A clear 90-character description beats a 155-character one that repeats itself.
For a worked example of getting from a weak first draft to a good one, step by step, see writing a meta description, five drafts measured.
What the checker does not cover
- Mobile and changing layouts. The 920 px figure is an observation of desktop results, not a published limit. Phones show snippets over more lines at different widths, and Google changes layouts.
- Dates and other additions. Google sometimes adds a date or other details at the start of a snippet, which takes space from your text.
- Whether your description is used. As above, Google often writes its own. The checker can only tell you whether your text would fit if it were used.
- Bold matches and font rendering. Search terms are often shown in bold, which widens them; browsers render fonts slightly differently. The checker uses one fixed width table, so leave a margin.
- Characters outside the table. Curly quotes, accented letters, many symbols and emoji are counted at an average width, so their measurement is approximate.
- Rankings and clicks. Google has said meta descriptions are not a ranking signal, and no length guarantees more clicks. A good description is a courtesy to the reader and a better candidate for the snippet; that is all it can promise.
Pair the description with a title that fits too. The Headline Pixel Counter does the same width check for the title at its larger size, and how wide a title tag can be explains the 600 px figure it uses.