Search
Descriptions are a sensible length
seo.meta-description-length
Why this matters
Long descriptions get truncated mid-sentence; very short ones waste the space you are given.
Who fixes it
You can, usually
Roughly how long
Minutes
Care needed
Low risk to change
How to fix it
Keep descriptions between 120 and 155 characters.
On your platform
WordPress
Your SEO plugin shows a length indicator as you type. If many are short in the same way, the plugin is generating them from an excerpt rather than from anything written — turning that template off and writing the top twenty pages by hand is the better return.
Shopify
The search engine listing section counts characters for you. Descriptions inherited from the product copy are the usual cause of the short ones, so the fix is writing the listing description rather than editing the product.
Drupal
Where a whole content type is wrong, the Metatag pattern is producing them and editing the pattern fixes every page at once.
Joomla
The Meta Description field on the article or menu item. Joomla shows no character counter, so paste it somewhere that counts if you are near the limit.
How we score it
Failing this check takes up to 5 points off your search score. It is a fact about your site rather than a measurement, so it reads the same on every scan until you change something.
Does your site pass this one?
This check runs on every scan, along with the other 106. Free, no account, and you see the evidence for each result.
Check my siteOther search checks
- Canonical tags point somewhere validA canonical tag tells Google which address is the real one for a page. When it points somewhere wrong — another domain, a dead page, or the wrong protocol — Google follows it anyway, and the page you wanted indexed can be dropped in favour of one that does not exist.
- Content has been updated recentlySome content is meant to sit still, and age alone is not a fault. But prices, opening hours and staff pages that have not been touched in over a year are usually wrong by now — and a visitor who acts on the wrong opening hours does not come back to check whether the rest was right.
- Each page has exactly one title tagA page can only have one title. When there are several, the browser and Google each pick one — and they do not always pick the same one, so what you see in the tab may not be what appears in search.
- Each page has one main headingSeveral top-level headings makes the structure of the page ambiguous. Worth checking rather than urgent — modern HTML permits it, and Google handles it, but it usually signals that headings are being chosen for their size.
- Every page has a main headingThe h1 is the headline of the page. Without one, both visitors skimming and search engines parsing the page have nothing telling them what it is about.
- Every page has a search descriptionThe description is the grey summary under your link in Google. Without one, Google pulls an arbitrary sentence from the page, which often reads as nonsense out of context and gives people no reason to click.