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Google Expands Meta Description limit from 160 to 320 characters



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Google Expands Meta Description limit from 160 to 320 characters

In a move that would seem contradictory to most, since they have stated they don't use the description for ranking purposes. Google has expanded the meta description tag from 160 characters to 320 characters.

This will give SEO's, webmasters, affiliate marketers etc, a chance to use those extra characters for including extra text in which they can promote their sites in the SERPs.  On top of this, Google is also going to increase the size of search snippets also. 

And this makes me ask, if Google is going to use a snippet of text from a webpage, and doesn't use the meta description for ranking purposes, why do they care enough to expand the meta description field in the first place?

Perhaps Google is expanding the meta description field as a way to let SEO's and webmasters know that the meta description is one of the most (if not the most) important part of Google's way of indexing and analysing websites in the SERPS?

I think the takeaway here regardless, is that meta descriptions are still important and moving forward, we should all take advantage of this expansion as you never know, Google could use it as part of your webpage's description or even as a featured snippet!

What do you think of this move by Google to do this?

Will you be going through all your old meta descriptions of 160 characters and expanding them to 320 now? Google Expands Meta Description limit from 160 to 320 characters

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TommyCarey
This is a pretty awesome move Google Expands Meta Description limit from 160 to 320 characters I definitely plan on editing some of my meta descriptions to double their length lol.

I've always used meta descriptions, even when people were saying they weren't needed anymore, mainly because you never know what Google will really look at when they stumble across your website. Google claims to love fresh and unique content, and that's what meta descriptions are if done right Google Expands Meta Description limit from 160 to 320 characters

I wonder if they decided to increase their meta description length because Twitter increased the length of the characters they allow within their tweets. Could Google have been watching what happened with Twitter when they increased their character limit and followed suit when the world didn't burn? lmao Google Expands Meta Description limit from 160 to 320 characters

I'm pretty excited to edit my descriptions because I remember when I wrote them for the first time it was tough due to the 160 character restriction. It was like I needed to get all my information into a single sentence, which was almost always impossible and I just said f*ck it and wrote whatever I wanted lol. now I don't have to worry about that because I can get 2 sentences in there now! Google Expands Meta Description limit from 160 to 320 characters



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keen2write
Yes, I noticed Google is now allowing more characters in meta description as when I updated yoast. I noticed it allowed me to enter more characters for description. The only thing now what worries me I will after go through all my websites and posts and update the descriptions.

I also noticed on Twitter as well, they are allowing more characters per tweet, so you can now do little longer tweets.



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Tronia
Oh, damn, that's really nice update. I didn't see it by myself so thank you for pointing it out. I will definitely take a look at all of my old meta descriptions because I honestly doubt that it doesn't affect the rank at all... I could be wrong but it just doesn't seem logical. It's better to do them regardless though, better to be safe than sorry!

Either way, this change of characters is extremely nice because 160 characters is a really, really small amount. I always struggled with it.



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Judas2018
I think it's a good thing for some webmasters. But I still prefer short, sweet and to the point meta-descriptions. You have to realize that no matter how long the meta-description is allowed to be - most people these days have very short attention spans. They don't like or care to read a lot of text. So if a long description pops up in their search results, I doubt they'll read past the first two sentences.



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vinaya
I was not aware of this new feature introduced by Google. I believe this is a positive move to help bloggers and webmasters. I think the increase in character limit will make search engine optimization easy. This feature will allow us to add more keywords and increase the chances of search engine positioning.



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overcast
It seems Google is investing into the content side of the search engine. You can see that knowledge graph side of the things are a bit harder to manage. You however have to be really focused on getting things done. I think meta description is one of the thing that needs to be properly setup. Because that can surely improve the website visibility. I guess that's something we have to check out.



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augusta
Oh really, didn't realize this thanks for pointing this out.It a nice one from Google.I'm sure webmasters and bloggers would be having a field day now on meta tags description, to give their posts all the needed tags that had limitation.One can even go back to the old post to modifies the tags, this is a useful addition.



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kgord
I guess more is better. Maybe putting something enticing in the description will be a bit easier now. You never know! It could work for all.



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Corzhens
If all of us agree that more is better then I guess Google is taking a cue from Twitter that also increased the limit of the tweet in terms of number of characters. But do you think it is wise to revise or edit the met description that you have on your previous posts? Will it affect the ranking positively? I’m afraid that editing the existing meta tags may have a bad effect on the site’s ranking.



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