Meta description: length, examples and writing them with AI

A meta description is a short summary of your page in the code. Google often shows it as the text under your title in the search results, but not always. Aim for 140 to 160 characters, with the core in the first 120.

It is your ad copy in Google. It helps decide whether someone clicks your result or your competitor’s. In the code it looks like this: <meta name="description" content="Your business tax return and quarterly estimates handled by one dedicated CPA in Denver...">.

What exactly is a meta description?

A meta description is a piece of HTML in the head of your page. It holds one or two sentences about what the page offers. Google uses it as a possible source for the snippet: the gray text under the blue title. According to Google’s documentation on snippets, snippets mainly come from the text on your page. Google uses your meta description when it describes the page better.

So Google may ignore your description. A description that says exactly what is on the page has the best chance of staying.

How long can a meta description be?

There is no fixed limit. Google writes that a meta description can be as long as you like. But Google cuts the snippet off at the width of the screen. That width is measured in pixels, not characters. A W takes more room than an i. So a 150-character sentence with many wide letters can break earlier than a 165-character one with narrow letters.

That is not much to go on, so here are the numbers side by side.

Source	What it says
Google	No limit, truncated at screen width
Portent, 2020 study	Google usually showed 150 to 160 characters on desktop (peak 156), on mobile up to about 120
Yoast	The plugin approves 120 to 156 characters
Our rule of thumb	140 to 160 characters, with the core in the first 120

Our rule of thumb follows from those numbers. Under 140 characters you leave room unused: you say less about what you offer, why you and what the reader should do now. Over 160 you risk losing your last words on desktop. And because mobile cuts off earlier, put the most important part first.

Why does Google rewrite your meta description?

Google chooses per search the text that best shows what is on your page. For many searches that is not your description. A page about tax preparation gets impressions for “small business tax preparation cost” and for “CPA Denver”. One description never fits both perfectly.

How often it happens has been measured. In 2020 Ahrefs compared the descriptions with what Google showed for 20,000 keywords. In 62.78 percent of cases Google showed different text. For popular keywords it was 59.65 percent. For keywords with little search volume, the long tail, it was 65.62 percent. Portent arrived at 71 percent on mobile and 68 percent on desktop for 30,000 keywords the same year. The studies are a few years old. But Google still writes that snippets mainly come from the page.

Ahrefs also saw that 25.02 percent of the top-ranking pages had no meta description. We still advise against leaving it out. For popular searches Google keeps your own text slightly more often. And that is exactly where you want to decide what it says.

What you can do to keep your text:

• Describe what is really on the page. Promise nothing the page does not deliver.
• Write for the query that gives the page the most impressions. You find it in Search Console.
• Do not use a string of keywords. Google itself gives the example of a sewing store listing “sewing supplies, yarn, colored pencils, sewing machines”: that helps nobody.

Write the page title at the same time

The page title, or title tag, is the blue line people click. You write it together with the description. According to Google on title links, there is no fixed length for the title either: it is truncated at screen width. Our rule of thumb is at most 60 characters, with the search term up front and your brand name at the end, after a separator.

Length, structure and ten examples by industry are in writing an SEO title.

The title says what the page is. The description says why the reader should click on you, with a fact and an action. So do not repeat the title in the description, or you waste half your space.

Google adjusts titles that are off, and lists the reasons. Four of them, translated to a small business site:

1. An outdated year, such as “Tax Preparation Fees 2024” on a page updated in 2026. Update the year when the content changes.
2. Nearly the same title everywhere: forty pages all called “Miller CPA | Your Accountant in Denver”.
3. A title that does not cover the content. The title promises prices the page does not have.
4. No clear main heading. Three equally large headings at the top, so it is unclear which is the real title.

Nine examples by industry, with character counts

These are examples for small US businesses. The number in parentheses is the character count, including spaces.

Industry and page	Title	Meta description
Accounting firm in Denver, service page	Small Business Tax Preparation in Denver | Miller CPA (53)	Your business tax return and quarterly estimates handled by one dedicated CPA in Denver, for a flat yearly fee you know up front. Request your price today. (155)
Accounting firm, blog post	What Does an Accountant Cost for Freelancers? 2026 Prices (57)	What freelancers pay for a tax return, quarterly estimates and bookkeeping help, and when doing it yourself is cheaper. With worked examples. Run the numbers. (158)
Electrician in Columbus, service page	EV Charger Installation in Columbus | Smith Electric (52)	Getting a home EV charger installed in Columbus? We start with a free panel check, then send a fixed-price quote. Same-week installs. Book your check. (150)
Bike parts store, category page	Disc Brake Pads | Shop by Brake Model | GearHub (47)	Disc brake pads for Shimano, SRAM and Magura, sorted by brake model. Order by 3 pm for same-day shipping, free returns within 30 days. Find your pads. (150)
Same store, product page	Shimano Deore Resin Brake Pads, Set of 2 | GearHub (50)	Resin brake pads for Shimano Deore disc brakes: quiet stopping, even in the rain. In stock, order by 3 pm and it ships today. Check if they fit your bike. (154)
Restaurant in Portland, homepage	Riverside Seafood Restaurant in Portland | Harbor Table (55)	Seasonal fish and vegetables on the river in Portland. Lunch from 11:30, dinner until 10 pm and a sunny patio. Reserve your table online in a minute. (149)
Hair salon in Austin, service page	Balayage in Austin with a Color Consult | Studio Lane (53)	Balayage in Austin with a color consult first, so you know what to expect. Prices by hair length are online; plan on 2.5 to 3 hours. Book your appointment. (155)
Real estate agent in Raleigh, service page	Sell Your Home in Raleigh | Oak City Realty (43)	Sell your home in Raleigh with an agent who knows the neighborhood. Free home valuation, a commission agreed up front and pro photos. Schedule your visit. (154)
Auto repair shop in Tampa, service page	Oil Change in Tampa, Open Saturdays | Bay Auto Care (51)	Oil changes in Tampa for gas, diesel and hybrid cars. Open Saturdays, free coffee in the waiting room and the price up front. Book your oil change online. (154)

Note what they have in common. The search term is up front. There is at least one fact not every competitor has, such as a flat fee, open Saturdays or free returns. And they end with a verb. Compare that with three common mistakes:

• “Welcome to the website of Miller CPA. We are an experienced accounting firm with an eye for quality.” No search term, no fact, no reason to click.
• “accountant denver, bookkeeper denver, tax return denver, tax preparation denver.” A keyword list, exactly what Google advises against.
• The same sentence on all forty pages, because the theme or plugin uses a template. Google writes that identical or near-identical descriptions on every page do not help.

Where do you fill in the meta description in WordPress?

In an SEO plugin, because WordPress itself has no field for it. Without a plugin or theme that handles it, your page has no meta description and Google picks some text itself. Which plugin fits you is in our overview of the best WordPress SEO plugins. What else to set up on a WordPress site is in our guide to WordPress SEO.

In Yoast SEO

Yoast explains it in its own guide:

1. Open the post or page.
2. Open the Yoast SEO sidebar in the editor.
3. Open the Search appearance section.
4. Fill in the meta description and save the page.

Without a description, Yoast warns that search engines will show text from the page.

Yoast also has templates, under Yoast SEO, Settings, per content type. There you fill in a default for pages where you entered nothing. That is useful as a safety net. But do not let it be your only description: a template produces exactly the identical texts Google warns about.

In Rank Math

In Rank Math, open the General tab in the editor and click Edit Snippet. There you change the title, URL and description. According to Rank Math’s knowledge base, a bar turns red if the text is too long or too short and green when it is right. The plugin also calculates the width in pixels. According to Rank Math, that pixel calculation only works for desktop. So keep an eye on the first 120 characters for mobile yourself.

Writing meta descriptions with AI, without them all sounding the same

That works fine if you give the AI different information per page and forbid fixed openers. Google has no objection. For large sites Google even encourages automatically generated descriptions, as long as they read well and differ from each other. That last part is where it goes wrong.

Which WordPress plugins do this for you is in AI plugins for WordPress SEO.

Ask ChatGPT for “a meta description for my services page” and you often get “Discover our professional services. Contact us today!” For thirty pages they then all start with “Discover”. Here is how to prevent that:

1. Give per page the query with the most impressions for that page in Search Console. If you do not have that yet, first read how to connect Search Console.
2. Give the facts of that page: price, delivery time, area, opening hours, warranty. Without facts a model fills the space with “quality and service”.
3. Forbid the stock openers: “Discover”, “Are you looking for”, “Welcome to”, “We are”.
4. Ask for three variants with a different structure, for example question and answer, fact and benefit, or place, service and proof. Pick one yourself.
5. Put all descriptions side by side in a spreadsheet and sort by the first four words. If more than a handful start the same way, rewrite those.
6. Count the characters in your spreadsheet and stay between 140 and 160.

More on good prompts for ChatGPT is in ChatGPT for SEO. Working on your pages anyway? Take the alt text of your images and your internal links along in the same round.

Which description do you start with?

Start with the page that has many impressions and few clicks in Search Console. How to find those pages, step by step, is in improve your SEO.

For an accounting firm in Denver that could be the tax preparation page: 2,400 impressions a month and 19 clicks. You write a better title and description in fifteen minutes.

On GreatCompany’s Automatic plan, your WordPress site gets up to 5 improvements every Monday, applied for you: titles, descriptions, internal links and alt text. From 4 weeks after an improvement, your overview email shows how many extra clicks the improved pages got from Google. At Miller CPA the page was first called “Tax Preparation | Miller CPA”. After the Monday round it is “Small Business Tax Preparation in Denver | Miller CPA”, with the description from the table above. How that works is in WordPress SEO on autopilot. Prefer to put changes live yourself, or through your web developer? On Pro you get them every week as SEO improvements in your dashboard.