Meta description generator, checked to the pixel

What a meta description is, and what it is not

A meta description is one line of HTML in the head of a page: <meta name="description" content="...">. Visitors never see it on the page itself. Search engines can show it as the snippet, the two or so lines of grey text under the blue title in a result.

Google describes a good one as a short, relevant summary that works “like a pitch that convince[s] the user that the page is exactly what they’re looking for”^[1]. Its starter guide calls it typically a succinct one or two sentence summary that is unique to one page and includes its most relevant points^[4].

What it does not do is rank the page. Google has said so plainly for years: even though it sometimes uses the description meta tag for snippets, it does not use it in ranking^[3]. Its 2007 guidance made the same point from the other side: the snippet can have a direct impact on the chances of your site being clicked, and accurate descriptions can improve clickthrough, but they won’t affect your ranking^[2]. So a meta description is worth writing for one reason only: people read it before they decide which result to open.

Will Google show your description?

Often not, and it helps to know why before you spend an afternoon on wording. Google says snippets are primarily created from the page content itself, and that it uses the meta description when it might give users a more accurate description of the page than content taken directly from the page^[1]. Snippets are chosen for each search, so the same page can show different text for different queries.

Source: Ahrefs^[6], a vendor study of Google desktop results, first published in 2020.

Two findings in that study change how to write one. First, length was not the trigger: Google rewrote 61.46% of the descriptions that were too long and 63.69% of the rest^[6]. Second, the rewrite rate rises on long-tail searches, where the searcher’s exact words are less likely to be in a description written for one head term. The lesson is not to give up. It is to write a description that matches what the page answers, put the main search phrase in it naturally, and accept that Google will sometimes prefer a passage from the page. That makes the opening paragraph of the page part of your snippet strategy too.

Pixels, not characters

Google does not publish a length. Its documentation says there is no limit on how long a meta description can be, but the snippet is truncated as needed, typically to fit the device width^[1]. Width is the key word. A line of capital Ws runs out of room long before a line of lowercase i’s, so any limit stated in characters is an average.

SEO tools measure where the cut falls instead. seoClarity puts it at 920 pixels on desktop, roughly 158 characters, and 680 pixels on mobile, roughly 120^[7]. Screaming Frog’s crawler flags descriptions over 985 pixels and calls its own figure an approximation that Google adjusts^[8]. We use 920 and 680 px, the same figures as our SERP preview, and measure with Arial’s real character widths at 14 px, with your keyword set in bold, which is wider than regular text, so a pass here errs on the safe side.

In practice that means two things. On desktop, ordinary English fills the line at around 140 to 150 characters once the keyword is bold, which is why this tool asks the model for 115 to 140 and then checks the pixels. On a phone, almost every full-length description is cut, so the keyword and the reason to click belong in the first 100 or so characters. Each option shows both bars and says where a phone stops reading.

A description that runs long is not an error. Google simply cuts it with an ellipsis, and the Ahrefs data says long ones are not rewritten more often. The cost is only that the end goes unread, so the end should be the part you can spare. To test a description and a title together, paste both into the SERP preview, which also flags the title patterns Google tends to rewrite; our guide to title tags covers the other half of the result.

How to write a meta description that earns the click

A reliable pattern has four parts, in this order. Most good descriptions use three of them; very few need all four.

• The keyword, early. The phrase people search for, in the first 60 characters, written naturally. It tells the searcher they are in the right place.
• What the page gives them. The answer, the product, the steps, the price list. Not what the page is “about”, what they get.
• One specific. A number, a time, a named feature, a place. Specifics are what make a result look like it has the answer rather than a page about the answer.
• A reason to choose this result. Free, updated, with templates, open on Sundays. Only if it is true.

<meta name="description" content="[Keyword phrase]: [what the reader gets]. [One concrete specific]. [Why this page].">

The three options this generator writes are three ways of arranging those parts. Benefit-led opens with the outcome the reader wants. Question and answer opens with the question in the searcher’s head and answers it in the next sentence, which suits how-to and informational pages. Specific detail carries a fact from the page, such as a number of steps, a price or a time, and never one the page does not state.

What Google calls bad and better

Google’s own documentation gives pairs of bad and better descriptions. Four of them cover the most common mistakes:

Quoted or summarised from Google’s documentation^[1].

Patterns by page type

Different pages earn the click with different facts. These are patterns, written for made-up sites, to adapt rather than copy. Google’s guidance specifically encourages tagged facts for products and bylines or dates for articles^[1].

Project management software for small agencies: plan client work, track time and send invoices from one place. Free for teams of three.

Oak standing desk with a solid oak top, quiet dual motors and four height presets. Ships flat-packed in two boxes, with a 10-year frame warranty.

How do you repot a snake plant? Wait for roots to fill the pot, move up one size, use fast-draining soil and skip watering for a week after.

Emergency plumber in Leeds: burst pipes, leaks and boiler faults fixed the same day. Open every day, with fixed call-out prices quoted upfront.

Trail running shoes for mud, rock and long days out, from light racers to cushioned ultra shoes. Filter by grip, drop and width, with free returns.

Free invoice generator: add your logo, line items and tax rate, then download a PDF invoice in seconds. No signup, and nothing is stored.

What a meta description cannot do

Sources: Google^[3][1]; Ahrefs^[6].

What AI answers do with your meta description

Less is published here than anyone selling an answer engine strategy would like, so here is only what has been documented or measured.

Google’s AI features. Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special optimizations necessary. The controls that limit what Search shows, nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex, apply to those features too^[5]. Google does not say whether its AI features read the meta description. The practical point is the other way round: a nosnippet tag added to stop Google rewriting your snippet also removes the page’s text from AI answers.

ChatGPT. RESONEO studied 1,249 real ChatGPT answers in 2026. For results from OpenAI’s own index, the snippet the model saw was cut at 202 characters, taken from the start of the page’s rendered body and anchored on the H1, and the meta description was ignored. For results ChatGPT took from Google, the meta description was picked up about one time in three. The model opened only 1.2% of the pages listed, so for most results that short snippet was all it read^[9].

A description for every page

This page writes one description at a time, for the pages you think of. The ones that cost you are usually the ones nobody remembers: a template that prints the same summary on every product, a blog with five years of posts that never had one. Google’s advice for that case is unusually direct: if you don’t have time for every page, start with the home page and your most popular pages, and for large database-driven sites, programmatic generation can be appropriate and is encouraged^[1].

CoreCited’s GEO Audit finds them for you. It crawls your site and runs 31 checks on every page, including a missing or badly sized meta description, and it lists every group of pages that share the same description, with the URLs, so you know exactly which ones to rewrite here.

The free account audits 10 pages with an email address and no card. Paid plans audit more and re-run on a schedule; every limit is on the pricing page. For a deep check of a single URL, the AI SEO checker runs the same 31 checks for free.

Meta description checklist

Run through this before you paste a description into your page. Your ticks are saved in this browser only.

Questions people ask

Sources