Meta descriptions: the right length, worked examples, and how to stop Google rewriting yours

A meta description is a short summary in the head of your page that search engines may use as the snippet under your title in the results. It is not a ranking factor. Google chooses the snippet per query, and it frequently writes its own from the page text when that fits the search better, which it explains in its documentation on snippets. Write one anyway, because when Google does use yours it is your sales line, and that affects clicks. There is no official character limit, and the practical target is one or two sentences of roughly 120 to 160 characters, with the useful part first so it survives truncation on a narrow screen.

This page covers writing them, their length, and the workflow for fixing the ones that are losing you clicks. For the title tag, which is a different element with a different job, Google's guidance on title links is the reference.

The syntax

<head>
  <title>Evening welding course, 12 weeks, Leeds city centre</title>
  <meta name="description"
        content="A 12 week evening welding course for complete beginners.
                 Two hours a week, all equipment provided, city centre
                 workshop. Next intake dates and fees inside.">
</head>

One per page, in the head, in plain text. No HTML inside it, no quotation marks that break the attribute, and a different one on every URL.

Length, in practice

Context	Practical target	Why
Desktop results	Around 150 to 160 characters	Truncation is by pixel width, not character count, so this is a working guide rather than a rule
Mobile results	The first 110 to 120 characters carry the message	Narrower column. Put the differentiator early
Pages where Google expands the snippet	Write the two best sentences and stop	Longer snippets appear for some queries. Padding to fill them reads as padding

The single rule that matters more than the count: front load. Whatever would make somebody choose your result goes in the first ten words.

What a good one contains

• The thing the page is, in the words the searcher used. Matching terms are shown in bold in the result, which is a visual cue before it is anything else.
• One concrete differentiator. A location, a duration, a format, a delivery promise, a free tier, a price range if you publish one. Specifics beat adjectives every time.
• A reason to click rather than to scroll. What the reader gets on the other side.
• No repetition of the title. You have two lines of space. Using one of them twice wastes it.
• Nothing that overpromises. A snippet that oversells produces a click and an immediate exit, and that helps nobody.

Examples by page type

Page	Description
Local service	Emergency boiler repair across north Leeds, seven days a week. Gas Safe engineers, usually on site within three hours. Fixed call out fee, no weekend surcharge.
Product	Waterproof leather walking boots in sizes 4 to 13, with a two year sole warranty. Free returns for 60 days and next day delivery on orders before 4pm.
Category	Compare 40 cordless drills by battery size, weight and torque, with filters for brand and price. Specifications listed in full on every product page.
Guide or blog post	How to read a commercial lease before you sign it: the eight clauses that cost tenants money, what each one means in plain English, and the questions to ask.
Comparison	A side by side look at the two main options for small teams, covering setup time, pricing model, integrations and where each one is the weaker choice.
Homepage	Independent accountancy practice for owner managed businesses in Manchester. Year end accounts, VAT, payroll and tax planning, with a fixed monthly fee.

Read each of those as if you were scanning ten results. The ones that work are the ones carrying a fact somebody else's snippet does not have.

Why Google rewrites yours, and what to do

Google replaces a meta description when text on the page answers the specific query better, when the description is missing or duplicated across many pages, or when it is stuffed with keywords rather than written as a sentence. So the way to reduce rewriting is not a trick, it is a match.

• Write one description per intent, not per keyword. If a page genuinely serves three different searches, Google will tailor the snippet for each, and that is useful rather than a problem.
• Make sure the page says what the description promises, early and in the same words.
• Two controls exist for the cases where you need them. <meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:160"> caps the snippet length, and a data-nosnippet attribute on an element keeps that text out of snippets. Both are documented on Google's snippet page. Use them for things like pricing tables or legal text you do not want quoted, not as a way to force your own copy through.

The workflow that is actually worth your time

Rewriting every description on a large site is a poor use of a week. Rewriting twenty is one of the highest return hours in SEO.

• In Search Console, open the Performance report, set the last three months, and sort pages by impressions.
• Note the site's average click through rate, then list the pages with high impressions and a rate well below it. Those pages are already being shown and are being passed over.
• For each one, look at the queries it appears for, then rewrite the title and the description together to match what those searchers want.
• Record the date. Check the same pages in four weeks, comparing the same number of days.
• For large catalogues, set a template with variables in your CMS or SEO plugin, so every product ships with a usable description, and hand write only the top sellers.
• Crawl the site periodically to find missing and duplicate descriptions. Duplicates across hundreds of pages are a template problem rather than a writing problem.

Questions buyers ask about meta descriptions

Do meta descriptions affect rankings?

Not directly. They affect whether somebody chooses your result, which is a real commercial effect and the reason to write them well.

What is the ideal meta description length?

Google publishes no character limit and truncates by width, so treat 150 to 160 characters as the working target on desktop and put the essential part in the first 110. One clear sentence that fits beats two that get cut.

Why is Google showing text I did not write?

Because it found a passage on the page that matched the query more closely. That is usually a sign the page is ranking for something your description does not address. Read the queries in Search Console and rewrite to match them.

Does every page need one?

Every page you want clicks on. For pages you have set to noindex, or deep paginated archive pages, it makes no difference. Spend the effort on the pages with impressions.

Should I put keywords in the meta description?

Include the phrase naturally, because matched words appear in bold in the result. Lists of keywords make the snippet unreadable and make a rewrite more likely.

What about the meta keywords tag?

Google does not use it. If your CMS still has the field, leave it empty and move on.

The snippet an assistant writes in place of yours

A meta description is a sentence you write for a results page, and Google may swap it for one of its own. An assistant goes further. It writes its own sentence about your page, with no obligation to use any of yours, and it may pull from a review or directory instead.

Ask about your page's topic in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity and read how each one describes it. Whatever you find, that is the snippet a buyer meets first. AI Knows Us collects those descriptions together with the sources behind them.