Meta description

The meta description is a piece of text stored in the source code of your page that appears nowhere on the page itself. It only becomes visible in the search result: there it sits below the blue headline and describes in two or three lines what awaits the visitor. You can think of it as the blurb on the back of the page.

Three things have to be known about it so that no false expectation arises. First, by Google's own account the description is not a ranking factor — it does not improve your position. Second, it is a suggestion, not an instruction: Google often replaces the text with a passage from the page itself when that fits the search query better. Third, there is no official character limit, only a display width that differs from device to device.

It is still worth the effort, and for one single reason: it has a share in deciding whether somebody clicks. Two pages can sit at the same position and be clicked at completely different rates. The position gets you into the shop window; the description decides whether anyone comes in.

What works in practice is unspectacular and barely promotional. Say what is on the page, for whom, and in which area — "Joinery in Worms, made-to-measure fitted wardrobes, on-site measuring and a fixed price before we start" gets clicked, "your competent partner for all things wood" does not. Name a figure or a condition if you have one. And write the text so that it still says something when cut off, because cut off it often is.

As a rule of thumb for length, around 120 to 160 characters has become established. That number is not a regulation but an observation: beyond it the text is generally cut off, below it space goes unused. On a mobile phone the limit is lower, which is why the most important part belongs at the start.

The most expensive mistake is not the bad text but the duplicated one. Many systems put the same sentence on every page, or there is none at all and the search engine grabs the first paragraph — which on many websites is a welcome phrase. Either way the slot is given away entirely. Every page that is meant to bring visitors needs a description of its own.

What you should not do in that text is just as clear: no claim the page does not deliver on, no price that no longer holds, and no superlatives such as "the best" or "number one". That is not merely a matter of taste — claims to a top position that cannot be substantiated are open to challenge under competition law. And a description that promises more than the page delivers produces visitors who leave again immediately. The short visit then costs you twice: once the trust, once the work that went into the page.

We therefore write these texts from the searcher's point of view: what does somebody who entered this query want to know, and is the answer to it in the first ten words. It is then checked against the delivered result, not in the file — whether the search result really shows our text or Google's own selection can only be seen there. How a search result is put together overall, and which components compete for attention, is set out in the entry on the search results page.