Google’s Long Meta Descriptions
In the past few months, the required length for meta descriptions was changed by Google. Instead of the 160 characters, now it is 320 characters. People from the SEO community, however, were not so ecstatic of this news. People who were used to the 160 characters meta description are now wondering if they should change it now or maybe implement it in their next meta descriptions.
Web Design Warrington and Yoast have already started to change the length of the meta description. However, despite many of the websites and SEO tools changing their length for meta description, some SEO communities are not convinced by this sudden change.
With this, we are going to discuss the reason why Google changed the length of the characters for the meta descriptions and how we were able to discover it.
Why did Google change the length of the characters in meta descriptions?
According to web design Warrington, one of the reasons why they changed the length is that Google itself creates meta descriptions based on the first paragraph of your article. From there they will try to create a meta description that would make sense to the public and attract readers to click the page.
How did we find out?
Web Design Warrington chose 100 of the most visited pages on one website. Before changing anything, the team of analysts did a baseline measurement as a basis. Then, they gathered the needed data through the Google Search Console account.
The team wanted to know the rankings of the pages before they can proceed with changing the meta description. Once they were able to get the data for this part, they decided to get the data after the ranking.
The 100 pages were divided into several groups depending on their metadata. The first group had the longest meta description to match the length requirement of Google. They also have inserted the main keyword in the meta description once.
The second group has a long meta description but the inserted keyword was mentioned more than once. The third group of meta descriptions did not have any changes. The team opted to use it as the basis. Lastly, the fourth group has no meta description, the team was hoping that Google will replace that meta description based on the first paragraph.
What were the results?
The team conducted the research at a maximum of two weeks. They were able to find out that Google will change the meta description, regardless if it is short, long, or whether keywords were used once or more than once. The team also found out that Google usually takes their meta descriptions from the first paragraph of the article which means that the meta description should have been written in the introduction of the website.
The Verdict
Many SEO companies are now starting to get confused about whether they should start creating their own meta description or allow Google to auto-generate one. They are also asking if it is possible to choose the descriptions that are available from Google. Considering that they do make their own descriptions, whether you had one or none.
Web Design Warrington and Yoast advised that you do not have to change the existing meta descriptions. However, you have to make sure to exert more effort in making better meta descriptions in your high ranking articles. Focus on the content and state what the article was all about on the first page.