How many characters use in a meta description?

At the beginning of May, the length of the meta description on Google has been shortened after the last update in December 2017, when the length reached limits up to 290 characters. Now, Google is coming back to previous limits. Best practice in 2019, is the same as in 2018 – keep it from 120 to 158 characters. To check your meta descriptions, use the counter tool above.

In our previous guide about what is a meta description, we did a quick test to prove, that meta description length doesn’t depend on the number of characters but on the width in pixels. 

Maximal limits

New Google’s meta description length is up to 920 pixels, which might allow for up to 158 characters.

On mobile devices, the max limit is about 680 pixels and 120 characters.

“Meta” title length in 2020

Google shows up to 600 pixels on a desktop. You can check it with SERP preview tool.

Recommendations:

1. If most of your customers are coming to your site from Google, you should stop writing longer meta descriptions. Maybe even think about coming back to old limits and make it shorter again.
2. Try to put all of the most interesting and intriguing information in the first 120 characters so the information will be displayed in any other search engine, mobile devices and social media. Remember, the goal of your meta description is to get the visitor to click through to your site.
3. Meta descriptions need to be targeting searched keywords. Otherwise, Google generates descriptions form site content. You still can keep the meta description clear, simple and eye-catchy so it will stand out in between other extensive result snippets.
4. Use our checker to find out if your meta description length fits perfectly to desktop and mobile devices in Google, Bing and Yahoo.