SEO finding
The meta description is too short, too wide or a copy of the title
SEO Warning Severity: Low
Part of the audit Meta description. Finding id: seo.metaDescriptionQuality.
What it costs you
A description that is cut off or says nothing new gives searchers less reason to click.
What to do
Write one or two sentences that add to the title and fit in [description max px] pixels.
What it checks
- Description too short to be useful
- Too long to show in search results
- Description repeats the page title
How to fix it
Rewrite the description, or fix the template that builds it
- Check the template_id of the pages found. When many share one template, change the template.
- Say what the visitor gets on this page, in words the title does not already use.
- Put the most important part in the first sentence, so a cut does less harm.
How to check: Recrawl the site and run this rule again.
A real case
Researchers at Ahrefs compared the meta descriptions of top-ranking pages for 20,000 keywords with the snippets Google showed, and found that Google replaced the written description 62.78% of the time.
Thresholds
| Name | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
description_min_chars | 70 | Descriptions with fewer characters than this are reported as too short. |
description_max_px | 920 | Widest description in pixels that we expect to fit in a desktop search result. Search engines publish no limit; this is our estimate. |