Google Is Showing Longer Descriptions in Search Results

More words under each result

Google confirmed last week that the descriptions under its search results can now be considerably longer. Many results that showed two lines of text now show three or four.

That description, which Google calls a snippet, used to run to about 160 characters. Now it can run to around 300.

Google described the change as making snippets more descriptive and useful, so searchers can see how a page relates to what they typed.

For a business, the snippet is the pitch in the results. It is often what decides whether someone taps your listing or the one below it.

Where the text comes from

• The meta description written for the page, when Google thinks it fits.
• The opening paragraph, often taken word for word.
• Sentences further down that match the words searched.
• Several fragments stitched together with dots between them.
• A date at the start, for posts and articles.
• Leftover text such as cookie notices, menus or old announcements.

The last is the one to check this week. With more room to fill, text that was never meant to be read first is more likely to appear under your name.

What has not changed

The title of each result still does the most work, and it is cut off at about the same length as before.

The meta description is still a suggestion rather than an instruction. Google has long substituted its own choice of text when the page's description seemed a poor match for the search.

And descriptions still play no direct part in ranking. They affect whether people choose your result once it is shown, which matters just as much.

Descriptions already written

There is no need to rewrite every description this week. A sound description of 150 characters still shows in full; it simply takes up less room than a longer one beside it.

For the home page and your main service pages, a fuller description is worth writing: two sentences, up to about 300 characters, saying what the business does, in which area, and why someone should pick it.

Keep the essentials in the first 150 characters anyway. Lengths can change again, and Google may still trim a description to suit a particular search or screen.

The opening paragraph matters more

Because Google so often lifts text from the page, the first paragraph is more likely than ever to be read in the results, by people who have not visited yet.

Write it as a description in its own right: what the business does, for whom, where, and one concrete reason. A welcome to our website, or a history beginning in 1986, spends the most valuable lines on the page.

The same paragraph is the first thing a visitor reads after tapping through, so the work counts twice.

Text you never meant to show

Cookie notices, skip-to-content links, menu labels, slider captions, copyright lines and announcements left at the top of a page can all end up in a snippet.

A closure notice from last winter is the worst kind: still on the page, still readable to Google, and wrong for anyone searching today.

Old prices, discontinued services and staff who have left come close behind. Anything near the top of a page should be true this month.

A worked example

A gelato shop on a neighbourhood shopping street makes its gelato on the premises. It opens late every day in summer, keeps shorter winter hours, and closes for three weeks each January.

Last week, a search for the shop's name and the word hours showed a three-line snippet that began: closed for our winter break, see you in February.

The line came from a notice added to the top of the about page last January and never removed.

The page had no meta description, so Google used the text that best matched the search, then added summer hours from the footer.

The notice came down the same day. The home and about pages now open with a paragraph saying what the shop makes, where it is and its current winter hours, and each page has a two-sentence description.

The shop asked Google to recrawl both pages through Fetch as Google in Search Console. Next January's closure will go up as a dated notice in December and come down the day the shop reopens.

On a phone screen

Phones fit fewer words on a line, so a long snippet can fill much of the screen, and the first few words do most of the work.

A snippet that opens with a menu label, a cookie notice or the words skip to content has spent its best position on nothing.

Every page its own description

Service pages, location pages and product categories each deserve a description of their own. Copying the home page's description across the site tells Google nothing about each page, and Google is then likely to ignore them and write its own.

The HTML Improvements report in Search Console lists pages with duplicate, long or short meta descriptions, which makes a useful starting list.

Where to look first

Search Console's Search Analytics report lists your pages and the searches that showed them, with impressions and clicks for the past 90 days.

A page that appears often but is rarely clicked is the first candidate for a better opening paragraph and description. Search for its main phrase yourself and read what Google shows.

The counter-case

Snippets change with every search, so nobody fully controls them. The same page can show its description for one search and a sentence from the middle for another.

For a business found mostly by people searching its name, the knowledge panel often matters more than the snippets, and that panel is fed by its Google listing rather than its pages.

Even so, the opening of every page is now part of how the business appears in search. Keep descriptions sound, and make every opening paragraph worth reading in the results.

Reading your own snippets

1. Search your business name and main services.
2. Read each snippet to the last word.
3. Remove stale notices from the tops of pages.
4. Rewrite each opening paragraph as a description.
5. Write fuller descriptions for your key pages.
6. Fix duplicates listed in Search Console.
7. Search again after Google recrawls.

Step four is the one with a double return. The opening paragraph is the first thing a visitor reads on the page and, more often than before, the first thing a searcher reads about the business.

The panel that can appear beside those results is covered in the knowledge panel for your business.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.