Google Increases Meta Description up to 320 Characters

Search marketers have wanted longer meta descriptions. As a key part of selling a page and describing it to a potential reader, change was something that many wanted.

Meta descriptions are used to help a reader know what the page will involve before they click on through to it. in the past, these were much too short and thus didn’t carry the same depth of information expected.

Now, that has changed. Google has officially made the change to allow the Meta description of a page to be 320 characters. This is much better than the previous 160 number and makes it so much easier to highlight and describe a page if you are a search marketer who has been waiting for this change.

Google themselves were quite happy with the change, noting that: “We recently made a change to provide more descriptive and useful snippets, to help people better understand how pages are relevant to their searches. This resulted in snippets becoming slightly longer, on average.”

This is very useful and should play a major role in the search industry for some time. While this might mean having to go back and make old Meta descriptions more detailed, it shouldn’t be a particularly major issue.

Users who check out website should now see a longer Meta description for just about any page that they visit. That’s a very important change – the old average of 160 was prohibitive. Now, websites can be much clearer in explaining what they offer, which should have a positive effect on content descriptions.

If you are looking for an easier way to help sell what your website is all about, this should make it much easier. That small extra descriptive style should go some way to helping improve website descriptions. Now, readers know what to expect before they click on through to the link.

Are you happy with the adjustment? Please let us know your thoughts below.

Source: Search Engine Land