Meta description length: how long it should be on desktop and mobile, measured in pixels

The short answer on meta description length: Google has no limit, and it cuts what it shows to fit the screen. On a desktop that is roughly 150 to 160 characters of ordinary text; on a phone, less. So the useful target is about 120 to 155 characters, with the point of the page in the first 100. This guide shows where those numbers come from, measures real descriptions in pixels, and reports what we saw when we pulled 84 live Google results on 11 October 2026.

Every width on this page is computed by the same code as our free SERP preview, so you can paste any example into it and get the same numbers. If you would rather start from the page than from a blank box, the meta description generator writes three options and checks each one against the same widths.

The first two figures are from our own small check: 6 queries, US results, pulled through DataForSEO^[9]. The pixel figure is seoClarity’s^[3] and is also what our SERP preview uses. The last is from Ahrefs’ study of Google desktop results^[2]. None of them is a Google rule.

Is there a meta description character limit?

Google’s documentation is direct about it: there is no limit on how long a meta description can be, but the snippet is truncated in Google Search results as needed, typically to fit the device width^[1]. So every number you have seen quoted, 155, 158, 160, 920 pixels, is somebody’s measurement of where the cut fell, not a rule Google published.

The measurements also move. In December 2017 Google confirmed a change that made snippets “slightly longer, on average”, and RankRanger’s tracker saw the average grow from 160 characters to almost 230^[5]. Five months later Google shortened them again. Danny Sullivan of Google wrote at the time: “There is no fixed length for snippets. Length varies based on what our systems deem to be most useful.” RankRanger then put the desktop average back at around 160 characters, and mobile at 130^[6]. Old posts that tell you to write 300 characters date from that window. Anything you read about length, this page included, is a snapshot.

Pixels, not characters

The snippet is cut where the line runs out of room, and letters are not the same width. In Arial at 14 px, the size most tools assume for a desktop snippet, a capital W is 13.2 px wide and a lowercase i is 3.1 px. A description full of capitals, Ws and Ms fills the line long before one of lowercase letters, at the same character count.

You can see it with one sentence. Google’s own example of a better description is the line about cooking eggs below. Written normally it is 150 characters and 935 px wide. Change nothing but the capitals and the same 150 characters measure 1,224 px. On a phone-width budget the normal version keeps 102 characters before the cut; the capitals version keeps 79.

Two things in that table are worth a second look. First, Brooks’ description measures over our 920 px desktop budget, yet Google showed every word of it. That fits what we saw across the whole check (next section): the 920 px figure is on the cautious side, which is the right side to err on. Second, on a phone budget, every full-length description is cut somewhere around the hundredth character. Microsoft’s reads, on a phone, “Compare Microsoft Project plans and pricing. Explore tools to manage projects, track resources, and ...”. Its point survives because it comes first.

What Google actually showed: our check

Published figures are years old, so on 11 October 2026 we pulled the top 10 Google results for 6 everyday queries, on desktop and on mobile, US English, through DataForSEO’s live SERP API^[9]. The queries mixed how-to, product and software searches: repotting a snake plant, running shoes for flat feet, what a meta description is, a sourdough starter recipe, project management software, and cleaning a cast iron pan. We counted the characters of each snippet as Google sent it.

On desktop, 30 of the 44 snippets ended in an ellipsis, and the cut fell between 145 and 164 characters, with a median of 160. The longest snippet shown whole was 156 characters. Measured with our Arial model, the longest whole snippet came to 972 px and the median cut one to 973 px. That sits between seoClarity’s 920 px^[3] and Screaming Frog’s 985 px, a figure Screaming Frog itself calls an approximation that Google adjusts^[4]. Our widths can’t see which words Google bolded, so treat them as close, not exact.

On mobile the text Google sent was nearly as long: cuts between 123 and 162 characters, median 153. That does not mean a phone shows all of it. How many lines a phone draws depends on the screen and the layout, which a data feed cannot see. So the 680 px mobile figure stays a third-party measurement we could neither confirm nor rule out. Our advice is built around it anyway, because a description that works at 680 px also works on a wider screen.

Desktop vs mobile truncation

Three things decide how much of your description a searcher reads, and only one of them is your character count.

The screen

seoClarity measured the cut at 920 pixels on desktop, roughly 158 characters, and 680 pixels on mobile, roughly 120^[3]. In our model the real descriptions in the table keep 94 to 106 characters at 680 px, a little under seoClarity’s estimate, because ordinary English with a few capitals and digits averages wider than plain lowercase. Treat 100 as the safe line for the important words.

A date

Google often puts a date in front of a snippet, mostly on articles. In our check 20 of the 44 desktop snippets started with one. The date shares the line, so the description gets less room. With a date in front, Google cut the description text at 141 to 148 characters, against up to 164 without. Our model agrees: adding a date such as “Mar 10, 2025” to the eggs example takes 104 px and leaves room for 128 characters on desktop instead of 141.

Bold words

Google bolds words in the snippet that match the search. Bold letters are wider. With “how to cook eggs” as the query, the eggs example grows from 935 px to 943 px. A few pixels, but enough to push a description that only just fits over the edge. That is why the SERP preview lets you type a query and why our generator measures with the keyword in bold.

How long should a meta description be?

Put the measurements together and a practical answer falls out. It is our recommendation, built from the figures above, not a rule from Google:

• Aim for 120 to 155 characters. Long enough to say something specific, short enough that a desktop result usually shows all of it.
• Put the keyword and the reason to click in the first 100. That part survives on a phone and next to a date.
• Make the last 50 characters expendable. A detail, a second benefit, a call to action. If it is cut, nothing is lost.
• Check the width, not just the count. Capitals, numbers and wide letters use the space faster than the count suggests.

SEO plugins land in the same place. Yoast’s length check flags descriptions under 120 or over 156 characters, and counts characters only^[7]. Rank Math checks both, capping at 160 characters and 920 pixels^[8]. If you work in WordPress or Shopify, the field and its counter live in different places on each platform; our walkthrough of meta descriptions in WordPress and Shopify shows where.

<meta name="description" content="[Keyword]: [what the reader gets, in the first 100 characters]. [One specific detail you can lose]." />

Too short is a problem too

The cut gets the attention, but very short descriptions fail in a different way: they don’t say enough to be the best summary of the page, so Google writes its own. Google’s documentation uses “Mechanical pencil” as its example of a description that is too short, and recommends a specific, detailed one instead^[1]. A useful floor is a full sentence that says what the page gives the reader.

Max length: what happens when a description runs long

Nothing bad, beyond the cut. A long description is not an error, and it does not make Google more likely to replace it. In Ahrefs’ study, 40.61% of the 192,656 descriptions it looked at were too long to show whole, and Google rewrote 61.46% of those against 63.69% of the rest^[2]. Length was not the trigger. Whether the description matched the search was.

So the maximum meta description length that matters is the one where your important words stop being visible. Write past it if you like; just don’t put anything there you need people to read. And because Google often rewrites the snippet anyway, the opening of the page itself is part of your snippet too. Why Google swaps descriptions out, and how to check what it shows for your pages, is covered in why Google ignores your meta description.

Character count for a meta description: what counts

A character counter is a rough guide, but it helps to know what it should count:

• Everything inside the quotes. Letters, spaces and punctuation in the content attribute all take room.
• Entities count once. & in the HTML is one ampersand on screen, so it is one character, not five.
• Emoji count as one character but are wide. Our model gives an emoji a full em, about twice a lowercase letter.
• Spaces at the ends don’t show. Runs of whitespace collapse to one space.

Then check the width. The SERP preview shows the cut on desktop and mobile as you type, with your search words in bold, and the guide to writing a meta description has twenty measured examples by page type.

Questions people ask

Sources