I hope you got some useful information from our recent blog post, "Improve snippets with a meta description makeover"! http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-w... In the comments, several people have asked what the word- or character- limit is on a meta description, so I'm here to clarify.
There's no fixed number of words/characters that you're "allowed." Try querying [roller derby] on Google, for example, and check out the snippets: the snippet for the #5 result ( www.txrd.com ) comes from that page's meta description, which is > 260 characters long, and we show the first ~150 of those characters in the snippet. The #10 result ( www.waynesderbyworld.blogspot.com ) has a 74 character meta description, and we use all of it as the snippet. The first one is more than 3 times as long as the second... but who cares? They both got used as the snippet for their respective page.
Both of these are pretty good meta descriptions because they're human- readable (not just a string of keywords) and they give you a good idea of what you'll find on that page. Conclusion: the content and quality of a meta description is much more important than its length! And your time is much better spent thinking about what sort of description would be useful and appealing to a user, rather than counting characters.
Feel free to let us know if you have other questions about meta descriptions and/or snippets!
> I hope you got some useful information from our recent blog post, > "Improve snippets with a meta description makeover"!http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-w... > In the comments, several people have asked what the word- or character- > limit is on a meta description, so I'm here to clarify.
> There's no fixed number of words/characters that you're "allowed." Try > querying [roller derby] on Google, for example, and check out the > snippets: the snippet for the #5 result (www.txrd.com) comes from > that page's meta description, which is > 260 characters long, and we > show the first ~150 of those characters in the snippet. The #10 result > (www.waynesderbyworld.blogspot.com) has a 74 character meta > description, and we use all of it as the snippet. The first one is > more than 3 times as long as the second... but who cares? They both > got used as the snippet for their respective page.
> Both of these are pretty good meta descriptions because they're human- > readable (not just a string of keywords) and they give you a good idea > of what you'll find on that page. Conclusion: the content and quality > of a meta description is much more important than its length! And your > time is much better spent thinking about what sort of description > would be useful and appealing to a user, rather than counting > characters.
> Feel free to let us know if you have other questions about meta > descriptions and/or snippets!
Whoa... two major clarifiactions on common questions in a day?
Steady on... ;-)
Seriously though; thank you for the post since, like the one about hidden text earlier, it is another official answer to a specific question which users can be pointed towards.
Just as a thought though, it may be an idea to pin these things to the top of their respective groups for a day or two to give all the regulars and semi regulars a chance to take in the information. :-)
> I hope you got some useful information from our recent blog post, > "Improve snippets with a meta description makeover"!http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-w... > In the comments, several people have asked what the word- or character- > limit is on a meta description, so I'm here to clarify.
> There's no fixed number of words/characters that you're "allowed." Try > querying [roller derby] on Google, for example, and check out the > snippets: the snippet for the #5 result (www.txrd.com) comes from > that page's meta description, which is > 260 characters long, and we > show the first ~150 of those characters in the snippet. The #10 result > (www.waynesderbyworld.blogspot.com) has a 74 character meta > description, and we use all of it as the snippet. The first one is > more than 3 times as long as the second... but who cares? They both > got used as the snippet for their respective page.
> Both of these are pretty good meta descriptions because they're human- > readable (not just a string of keywords) and they give you a good idea > of what you'll find on that page. Conclusion: the content and quality > of a meta description is much more important than its length! And your > time is much better spent thinking about what sort of description > would be useful and appealing to a user, rather than counting > characters.
> Feel free to let us know if you have other questions about meta > descriptions and/or snippets!
@bobsc: If you're asking whether there's an x for which a meta description of x characters could be displayed, but x - 1 would never be displayed, then no; there's no absolute maximum or minimum in that sense. But think about it in terms of user experience: if your meta description is <meta name="description" content="Book" /> there's very little chance that that description would be used as a snippet in our search results, since "Book" is too brief to tell the user what they'll find on the site, or how it's relevant to their query. Is it a site for buying books? Is it an e-book that some author has published online? Is it a site for booking a hotel room? If a meta description is so short that it doesn't contain enough useful information, we'll probably select the snippet from somewhere else.
Again: it's not about numbers, it's about what's most useful for users.
Of course, I agree that usefulness for the user is key. But even so, in important pages, it makes sense to take special care of the part of the meta description that will potentially appear in Google results.
That's why we have developped a free tool that simulates what Google does with the title and meta description. If you want to see the part of your title and meta description that could appear in Google and where Google could truncate it, please visit our Meta Description Test page ( http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/meta-description-test/ ).
" 260 characters long, and we show the first ~150 of those characters in the snippet. The #10 result ( www.waynesderbyworld.blogspot.com ) has a 74 character meta description, and we use all of it as the snippet. "
So the max length is ~150, what is the minimum? I have noticed if it is less than about 45 the meta text is not used.
This is useful information because if the text isn't used the content isn't irrelevant ( in the description snippet ).
> I hope you got some useful information from our recent blog post, > "Improve snippets with a meta description makeover"!http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-w... > In the comments, several people have asked what the word- or character- > limit is on a meta description, so I'm here to clarify.
> There's no fixed number of words/characters that you're "allowed." Try > querying [roller derby] on Google, for example, and check out the > snippets: the snippet for the #5 result (www.txrd.com) comes from > that page's meta description, which is > 260 characters long, and we > show the first ~150 of those characters in the snippet. The #10 result > (www.waynesderbyworld.blogspot.com) has a 74 character meta > description, and we use all of it as the snippet. The first one is > more than 3 times as long as the second... but who cares? They both > got used as the snippet for their respective page.
> Both of these are pretty good meta descriptions because they're human- > readable (not just a string of keywords) and they give you a good idea > of what you'll find on that page. Conclusion: the content and quality > of a meta description is much more important than its length! And your > time is much better spent thinking about what sort of description > would be useful and appealing to a user, rather than counting > characters.
> Feel free to let us know if you have other questions about meta > descriptions and/or snippets!
> " 260 characters long, and we > show the first ~150 of those characters in the snippet. The #10 > result > (www.waynesderbyworld.blogspot.com) has a 74 character meta > description, and we use all of it as the snippet. "
> So the max length is ~150, what is the minimum? I have noticed if it > is less than about 45 the meta text is not used.
> This is useful information because if the text isn't used the content > isn't irrelevant ( in the description snippet ).
> Bill
> On Oct 5, 6:37 pm, Susan Moskwa wrote:
> > Hey folks--
> > I hope you got some useful information from our recent blog post, > > "Improve snippets with a meta description makeover"!http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-w... > > In the comments, several people have asked what the word- or character- > > limit is on a meta description, so I'm here to clarify.
> > There's no fixed number of words/characters that you're "allowed." Try > > querying [roller derby] on Google, for example, and check out the > > snippets: the snippet for the #5 result (www.txrd.com) comes from > > that page's meta description, which is > 260 characters long, and we > > show the first ~150 of those characters in the snippet. The #10 result > > (www.waynesderbyworld.blogspot.com) has a 74 character meta > > description, and we use all of it as the snippet. The first one is > > more than 3 times as long as the second... but who cares? They both > > got used as the snippet for their respective page.
> > Both of these are pretty good meta descriptions because they're human- > > readable (not just a string of keywords) and they give you a good idea > > of what you'll find on that page. Conclusion: the content and quality > > of a meta description is much more important than its length! And your > > time is much better spent thinking about what sort of description > > would be useful and appealing to a user, rather than counting > > characters.
> > Feel free to let us know if you have other questions about meta > > descriptions and/or snippets!- Hide quoted text -
What I'm wondering is how does one know Google will use a webmaster provided snippet or create one itself.
It would seem that Google tries to come up with snippets that are most relevant to a given search so unless one creates a description with all the relevant keywords and phrases for a given page, the meta- description likely will go unused.
It seems to not be useful to come up with what one might think to be good description text if Google creates its own anyway.
Probably a way to help ensure Google would use a site provided description is to make sure the description contains all the keywords/ phrases one might search on that the given page would be applicable for but to do that, you'd almost have to include the entire textual contents of the page in the description and that would seem counter productive.
Personally, I wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to come up with better snippets than Google can or will.
> I've not had any reason to complain about Google's snippets - it seems > to do quite well.
My only "complaint" would be that they are better than I could hope to come up with on my own. :-()
> Now that we're told the description tag has no effect on ranking - I > wonder if there's that much point in it.
My thoughts exactly.
One problem that I could see that not having a description would cause, which is the same as not having meta-keywords is that most online "SEO evaluation tools" give you a shitty score if you don't include things like that. Things that haven't made a difference for so long one wonders when the "SEO evaluation tool" was made in the first place. ;-)
For me, I think I'll save triple the time, forget about meta-keywords, which I already do, forget about meta-description, which I haven't seen the point of for a long time and to save the most time of all, give up on out of date so called "SEO" tools. :-()
All well and good, but I have a need to replace some of the snipets that googlebot didn't do so well with. It woud be nice to be able to do so as I am sure you are aware that is the first thing a user sees in the SER after the title.
For the user I would like to have a useful snippet even when google bot doesn't supply one.
Please.
No one asked about increasing rank. Didn't ask about usless tools.
> > I've not had any reason to complain about Google's snippets - it seems > > to do quite well.
> My only "complaint" would be that they are better than I could hope to > come up with on my own. :-()
> > Now that we're told the description tag has no effect on ranking - I > > wonder if there's that much point in it.
> My thoughts exactly.
> One problem that I could see that not having a description would > cause, which is the same as not having meta-keywords is that most > online "SEO evaluation tools" give you a shitty score if you don't > include things like that. Things that haven't made a difference for > so long one wonders when the "SEO evaluation tool" was made in the > first place. ;-)
> For me, I think I'll save triple the time, forget about meta-keywords, > which I already do, forget about meta-description, which I haven't > seen the point of for a long time and to save the most time of all, > give up on out of date so called "SEO" tools. :-()
