Meta Description Length: The 50–160 Rule

Short answer: aim for 50–160 characters. Long answer: Google has been rewriting bad meta descriptions for years, but a tight, well-written one still controls your snippet most of the time — and a controlled snippet means a higher CTR.

Why 160 characters?

Google truncates at roughly 920 pixels on desktop and 680 on mobile, which works out to about 158–160 characters in most fonts. Anything past that gets clipped with an ellipsis. On mobile, anything past ~120 characters might get cut on smaller screens.

Why a 50-character minimum?

Too short and Google assumes you don't have a real description and pulls a random sentence from your page instead. 50+ characters tells Google you've written something intentional.

What to actually write

• Lead with the user benefit, not your brand name
• Include the primary keyword once, naturally
• End with a clear call-to-action ("Try free", "See pricing", "Read the guide")
• Write a different one for every page — duplicates get ignored

Example

<!-- Bad: 192 chars, salesy, no CTA -->
<meta name="description" content="We are the world's leading SEO agency providing comprehensive search engine optimization services to businesses of all sizes across multiple industries worldwide since 2010." />

<!-- Good: 138 chars, benefit-led, CTA -->
<meta name="description" content="Run a free SEO audit on any site in 30 seconds. Get prioritized fixes for meta, schema, Core Web Vitals — and auto-apply on WordPress." />

How to find pages with bad descriptions

Run FreeSEO's audit — it flags every page with a missing, too-short, too-long, or duplicated meta description. Fix all the high-impact ones first; the homepage and money pages move CTR the most.