Meta Description
A meta description is a short summary of a web page, written into the page's code, that search engines can show under the page's title in results. Google says it builds most of these snippets from the page itself, and sometimes uses the meta description when it might describe the page better than text taken from the page.
Source: Google Search Central, Control your snippets in search results, checked October 29, 2026
What Meta Description means for your business
There's no character count in Google's guide. Snippets get cut to fit the screen, and the 150 to 160 rule you'll read about comes from tool blogs, not Google. Google does say a string of keywords is less likely to be shown, and it asks for a different description on each page rather than one copied across the whole site.
We'd begin with the home page and the pages that get the most visits. Google's own example of a better description for a shop says what it sells, its opening hours and where it is. For each page, picture a customer calling to ask what it's about, and write down your answer.
In Search Console, when a page's impressions hold steady but its clicks fall, Google's guide to traffic drops says to look at its title and snippet. We'd check those before rewriting anything else on the page.
If Google shows your pages but the line under the link doesn't say what you do, writing a plain summary for each page is an early fix in our answer engine work.
Last reviewed October 29, 2026. All terms
How AI answers it today
On October 29, 2026, Google's AI Overview cited Google's snippet guide next to SEO tool blogs and YouTube, but its figure for how often Google uses the description came from those blogs. ChatGPT gave a bakery example and a character target, and cited nothing.
Our run through ChatGPT and Google's AI Overview, October 29, 2026. A sample, not what every buyer sees.
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