150 to 160 characters. HTML places no limit on the tag itself, but Google truncates what it displays: around 155-160 characters on desktop and closer to 120 on mobile. Everything past the ellipsis is invisible to searchers, so the practical limit is not what you can write - it is what survives truncation on the device your audience uses.
| Element | Displayed before truncation |
|---|---|
| Meta description (desktop) | ~155-160 characters |
| Meta description (mobile) | ~120 characters |
| Title tag | ~50-60 characters (~600 px) |
These are display behaviors, not published rules, and Google adjusts them from time to time. The safe pattern is stable though: make the first 120 characters carry the complete pitch, and use the remainder for supporting detail that can be lost without damage. The same logic applies to the title tag - front-load the keyword and the differentiator before the cutoff.
Studies consistently find Google rewrites the displayed snippet for well over half of results, pulling page text it judges a better match for the query. That is an argument for writing better descriptions, not skipping them. Google rewrites most aggressively when the supplied description is generic, off-query, or over-long; a specific, keyword-relevant description that fits the display window gets used as written far more often. And your description is what shows on the queries you most want to win - the ones the page is actually about.
Lead with the searcher's payoff, not your brand: the answer, the number, the outcome the query was looking for. Include the primary keyword naturally - Google bolds query matches, which draws the eye in a results page full of competitors. End with a reason to click that the title tag did not already spend. "Learn more about our solutions" wastes all three jobs at once; "Free word limit counter with per-paragraph counts - and one-click reduction when you're over" does them in 100 characters.
Writing one 155-character description is craft; rewriting eighty of them during a site audit is labor. That is the case for compressing drafts mechanically: write each description at full length so nothing is missing, then cut to the display limit. WordLimit's meta description shortener trims each draft to an exact character target while keeping the keyword and the click reason - paste, set 155, repeat. The full display-limit reference lives in our SEO meta tags guide.
150-160 characters, with the complete pitch inside the first 120 for mobile.
No - it rewrites most snippets. Specific, query-relevant, correctly-sized descriptions get used as written most often.
No penalty; the snippet just truncates. The cost is a cut-off pitch and a weaker click-through rate.
WordLimit
