Meta description length: how many characters Google shows

Google sets no maximum meta description length. It cuts the snippet by pixel width to fit the screen, which in practice means about 150 to 160 characters on desktop and about 120 on mobile before the ellipsis appears. Write 120 to 155 characters, put the point in the first 120, and you are covered on both.

For how to write the text itself, read the meta description guide, and for finished samples see meta description examples.

Is there an official meta description length limit?

No. Google's snippet documentation says there is no limit on how long a meta description can be, and that the snippet is truncated as needed, "typically to fit the device width". It gives no character count anywhere.

So a 300-character description is not an error, and any tool that flags 161 characters as a failure is applying its own rule of thumb, not Google's.

The same page says Google primarily builds snippets from the page content and uses your meta description when it describes the page better than the body text does. When it picks a page passage instead, your tag's length doesn't matter for that query.

Why Google truncates by pixels, not characters

Results render in a proportional font, so the cut point depends on the letters you use. A line of "w" and "m" fills the space far sooner than a line of "i", "l" and "t". Two descriptions of 150 characters can end in different places, one complete and one clipped.

Digits and capitals push the cut earlier, so a description full of prices, model numbers or ALL CAPS words should run shorter. Plain lowercase prose can run a little longer.

When Google cuts, it ends the snippet with an ellipsis. Anything after that point is invisible, so the end of a long description is the worst place for the offer, the price or the call to action.

Meta description length for desktop and mobile

Mobile shows less text than desktop, because the result column is narrower. These ranges come from our snippet model, which measures text in 14px Arial, not from any figure Google publishes.

Treat them as targets, not rules. Google changes result layouts without notice.

The practical plan:

1. Put the claim that earns the click in the first 120 characters, so mobile shows it.
2. Use the room up to about 155 characters for a supporting detail that can be lost on a phone.
3. Avoid stacking capitals and digits in the opening line.
4. Preview the snippet before you publish, because character counts alone guess wrong on wide text.

Don't go too short either. Under about 70 characters you leave space unused.

When max-snippet sets a hard limit

The max-snippet robots rule is the only real character limit, and you set it yourself. Google's robots meta tag documentation says max-snippet:[number] caps the textual snippet at that many characters. 0 means no snippet at all, the same as nosnippet. -1 lets Google choose the length.

<meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:120">

This tag caps the snippet whatever your description says, so a 155-character description on a page with max-snippet:120 will be cut at 120. If a description clips earlier than the width predicts, look for this tag. The full set of snippet controls, including data-nosnippet and the effect on AI Overviews, is in our post on nosnippet and max-snippet.

Raising the cap does not make Google show more. It still truncates to the device width.

Check your meta description length on a live page

Our On-Page SEO Checker fetches a URL, reads the first non-empty meta description and the title, and shows an approximate desktop search snippet with each line marked when it would clip. It measures the description's width in pixels against the 920px desktop budget and warns when it will truncate, reporting the character count and the estimated width. It flags a description under 70 characters as short, a missing description, more than one description tag, and a description that repeats the title word for word.

The same run checks the H1 to H6 heading outline, and if you add a target query, grades how well the title, H1, URL and body cover it. It costs 8 credits per run. It reads the HTML as served, so a description injected by JavaScript after load won't appear, and it can't tell you whether Google actually shows your description for a given query, since Google may rewrite it from page content.