With an ever-changing SERP landscape made of multiple screens and evolving user needs, SEO marketers and copywriters need to stay abreast of any and all changes. Taking into consideration and adapting to Google’s tweaked algorithm is a huge part of that. Speaking of changes, today we decided to take a closer look at Google’s increasingly unpredictable display of meta descriptions in 2018.
But first, what are meta descriptions?
Meta descriptions are snippets whose main purpose is to summarize the content of a page in a way that sparks interest in the eyes of users and encourages them to click through. These short pieces of text are marked up in the HTML of a webpage and are displayed under the URL in the search results. Meta descriptions also appear when webpages are shared on social media channels, such as Twitter and Facebook.
Size Does Matter (Sort Of) — Mobile VS Desktop
After the update from December 2017, when the meta description length reached limits of up to 290 characters, now Google is gradually coming back to previous limits with its most recent update at the beginning of May this year. The best practice so far in 2018 offered by marketers and SEO experts, is to keep meta descriptions up to 120 characters for mobile and between 120 and 158 characters for desktop screens.
It is important to note that aside from characters, Google’s algorithm is judging the usefulness of the meta description as well which means it can choose to include more text if it is likely to answer the search query better and more quickly. Keep that in mind next time you’re writing meta descriptions!
The Takeaways
While people at Google were not willing to commit to a specific length for meta descriptions back in May because “snippet length is dynamic,” at 411 Locals, we still believe that it is not just about reaching a target character mark, it is about quality content as well.
If you are unsure of how to go about managing your meta descriptions or prefer to have a professional SEO company do it for you, our team will gladly handle that for you. Stay tuned for our next topic!