Google confirms — Character length for Meta Description or Search Snippets Changes again

But you haven’t wasted the time in writing long meta descriptions recently

A meta description is an essential part of On Page SEO. Though there is no direct link of this element with the ranking of your site in the SERPs. But it gives the idea to the readers that what is in there.

A well-written meta description attracts the reader to click on the link when he/she searches something about the related topic on the search engine.
From quite a long, the length of the meta description or search result snippets was 160 characters. This character length was extended to 230 to 320 characters in the month of December last year.

After the search result snippets length was extended many of the SEOs or site owners fall to write the big meta description for the latest articles and also for some of the published articles from the recent past. Many of them wrote new or long meta descriptions for the content they had published in the past and also for the new articles.

All those SEOs or the site owners are now in dismay as they don’t know what to do now. And the reason for their restlessness is this official statement from Danny Sullivan of Google —

Our search snippets are now shorter on average than in recent weeks, though slightly longer than before a change we made last December.

Many of the webmasters, SEOs, and site owners are getting the short search result snippets recently. And when they ask about it to Google then Sullivan came forward and tweeted about the confirmation of the shortened search results snippets after expanding them last year in December.

This is what caused the uneasiness for many SEOs and webmasters. Now many of them are thinking about changing the meta description of the articles back to the normal.

Are you also one of them?

If yes, then wait for a minute folks. There is no need to dismay or feel uncomfortable with this official statement of Danny Sullivan from Google. As per him the length of the search result snippets is shortened from the recently changed one (in December) but he also said that they are longer than before (i.e. 160 characters).

Also, the other official statement from Danny Sullivan on this might give you relief as he stated —

There is no fixed length for snippets. Length varies based on what our systems deem to be most useful.

So I hope now you people might get the exact answer to your restlessness on the change in the length of the meta description.

Wrap Up

As Sullivan stated the length of the meta description or search result snippets is shortened from the recent change made in December last year, there is a clear answer too that there is no minimum limit of a meta description. All depends on the query of the searcher and also on the content.

Google never said that there is a limit of the minimum of maximum characters for the meta description tag.

To end this topic, here is another statement on this query from Sullivan —

We were very clear there was no need for people to change meta description tags

So just be specific with your meta description tag and there is nothing to fear about as your time is not wasted actually in writing new meta descriptions.