How to write meta descriptions that get clicked

Meta descriptions are the most misunderstood tag in on-page SEO. Half the internet still treats them as a ranking signal (they aren't). The other half ignores them entirely (a mistake). The truth is in the middle: descriptions don't help you rank - they help you collect the rank you already earned. Two pages can earn position 4 with the same content; the one with the better description gets twice the clicks.

This guide skips the "what is a meta description" framing (the tool below covers that) and goes straight to the writing playbook: the 155-character truncation rule, the rewrite-frequency mental model, and how to spot the gap between impressions and clicks in Search Console.

Check any meta description right now

Paste any URL below. The tool extracts the live <meta name="description">, shows the character count, and renders the SERP snippet preview - the fastest way to spot pages whose descriptions are missing, truncated, or duplicated across the site.

Why descriptions are CTR work, not ranking work

Google has been explicit since 2009: meta descriptions are not used in ranking. SEOs who keep treating them as a ranking lever are running on muscle memory from the early 2000s. The actually-useful framing is this: descriptions are an ad. They sit underneath your title in a list of ten ads, and they have one job - convince a searcher to click your link instead of the nine alternatives.

The CTR math is what makes this work matter:

• A page at position 4 with a 4% CTR earns the same traffic as a page at position 6 with a 7% CTR. Description rewrites can move CTR by 1-2 percentage points without touching rank, which on a high-impression query is meaningful traffic.
• Google does watch CTR as an engagement signal. A page that consistently out-clicks its peers in the same SERP slot moves up over time. So the second-order effect of a great description is rank lift, even though descriptions themselves aren't a ranking factor.
• Descriptions also gate which visitors click. A specific description filters out the wrong audience, which protects bounce rate and time-on-page - both of which Google can measure.

The 155-character rule (and why it isn't really a rule)

The classic advice is "keep descriptions under 155 characters." This is roughly correct and it misses the actual mechanic. Google truncates descriptions at the rendered pixel width of the SERP snippet container, which is roughly 920 pixels on desktop and 680 pixels on mobile. Character counts are a proxy. The practical rules:

• Aim for 140-160 characters. Anything longer will truncate on the SERP variant most users see (mobile is shorter than desktop, so optimize for mobile).
• Front-load the value prop. The first 70-80 characters survive every truncation; the back half is at risk. If your CTA is at the end, you are routinely losing the close on a page-by-page basis.
• If the page is targeting multiple high-intent queries, write a description that earns the click for the most-searched variant. You cannot please every query with one description.
• Avoid hard-stop punctuation in the middle of the description. Google sometimes truncates at sentence boundaries; a comma keeps the text flowing if the back half clips.

The audit move: do not character-count. Run titles + descriptions through the embedded tool and look at the actual SERP preview. Anything getting visibly cut on the mobile preview is a description that needs a rewrite.

What to do when Google rewrites your description (it does, ~60% of the time)

Google rewrites about 60% of descriptions in the SERP, replacing yours with body text it thinks is a better answer to the query. This is not a problem when the rewrite is faithful - Google is doing the work of producing query-specific snippets that you cannot pre-write for. It IS a problem when:

1. Google is pulling the rewrite from a low-quality region of the page - boilerplate footer text, a call-to-action button, navigation labels. This usually means your body copy is not delivering on the title's promise above the fold, and Google is reaching deeper to find an answer.
2. Google ignores your description on the brand query for the page. If a searcher types your exact page name and Google STILL rewrites the description, the description is fundamentally misaligned with what the page contains. Rewrite both the description and the body intro.
3. Google quotes anchor text from inbound links instead of your description. Same diagnosis as the title-rewrite case: your description is weaker as a relevance signal than the consistent anchor text on inbound links. Align them.

The audit workflow when Google is rewriting:

1. Pull the page's top 10 queries from Search Console (last 90 days).
2. For each query, check the live SERP in incognito. Note whether the rendered snippet matches your description, partially matches, or is completely rewritten.
3. If 8+/10 queries are rewriting, your description is misaligned with how users are actually finding the page. Rewrite to match the highest-impression query's intent.
4. If 2-3/10 queries are rewriting, your description is fine - the rewrites are query-specific snippet generation. Leave it alone.

The biggest mistake: duplicate descriptions across templated pages

The single most common meta-description sin on a templated site (e-commerce, listings, programmatic SEO pages) is the same boilerplate description rendered on every page in a content type. The product-page template emits "Buy [product] online with free shipping at [Brand]" on 5,000 product pages. The description is technically present on every page, and it is technically useless on every page - because it tells Google and the searcher nothing specific.

The audit move:

1. Run your sitemap through a duplicate-meta-description checker (we have one at /tools/duplicate-meta-description-checker). It will group pages by identical description and show you the worst offenders.
2. For each duplicated cluster, decide whether the description should be (a) made dynamic by interpolating page-specific data into the template, or (b) deleted entirely so Google can generate query-specific snippets from the body.
3. Option (b) - deleting duplicate descriptions - is often better than a poorly-templated dynamic one. A blank description triggers Google to generate from body copy, which on a well-written page can produce more specific snippets than a generic template would.

The decision rule: never serve the same non-trivial description on more than ~10 pages. If you can't write something specific, don't write anything.

What a clean description audit looks like

Run this quarterly on the top 20% of pages by impressions. The fix is mechanical and the lift is fast - description rewrites take effect on the next crawl, often within days.

1. Pull top 50 pages by impressions from Search Console. Identify the ones with the lowest CTR relative to their position. A page at position 5 should average ~6% CTR; if yours is 2%, the description (or title) is the most-likely culprit.
2. Run each through the description checker. Flag missing descriptions (Google will auto-generate, often poorly), too-short descriptions (under 80 characters - leaving SERP real estate on the table), and over-length descriptions (over 160 - truncated mid-sentence).
3. Run the duplicate-meta-description checker against your XML sitemap. Cluster pages by identical or near-identical descriptions and decide per-cluster: rewrite dynamically or strip and let Google auto-generate.
4. Check live SERP rendering for the top 5 pages in incognito. Compare your description to what Google is actually showing. Heavy rewriting on brand queries is a signal the description is misaligned with the page.
5. Rewrite for the highest-impression query intent. A page can rank for 200 queries; the description should sell the click for the top-2 query intents. Don't try to write a description that pleases every query.
6. Re-test 2-4 weeks after deploy. CTR moves within days; cumulative impression lift takes 4-8 weeks. Compare the same 90-day window before and after.

Quick quiz: are you ready to rewrite your own descriptions?

Five questions, takes two minutes. We'll show you the right answer and a one-line explanation after each one.

Next up in On-Page SEO

Titles get the click; descriptions seal it. Once those two are tuned, the rest of the on-page work shifts inside the page:

• Header tags hierarchy - structuring H1-H6 so Google parses the outline correctly.
• Canonical tags - when to use them, when not to, and what happens when Google overrides yours.
• Open Graph and social previews - the off-Google CTR work most teams ignore.