Meta description is shorter than 70 characters
In the reportNonempty meta description has fewer than 70 characters
meta_description_under_minimum · Opportunity
Review this description for a useful, page-specific summary.
Use the recorded value and exact measurement in the report to decide whether an edit would help.
Severity: Notice. This measurement alone does not prove lost traffic, ranking or snippet space.
Why it matters
A concise, specific summary can help people recognize the page.
Google may choose other page content for snippets; this rule does not predict that choice.
What to do
- Read the complete description in its page context.
- Put distinctive information first; shorten or expand it only when useful.
- Run a subsequent full audit to compare the same page with complete coverage.
When to leave it as it is: Leave a useful, accurate description in place when changing its length would reduce clarity.
What we read
One unambiguous meta name=description declaration with content in the captured original HTML head.
Count NFC-normalised Unicode characters after collapsing whitespace. The shared measurement checks text support against the pinned Liberation Sans Regular 2.1.5 reference; the threshold uses character count, not pixel width.
Example & evidence
Illustrative character-count example, not recommended page copy or a live audit.
<meta name="description" content="A short summary."><meta name="description" content="A useful and specific summary of this page, with enough detail to explain its purpose.">Confirm & check again
Check for yourself: Check that the summary accurately distinguishes this page. Read the exact character count in the report.
Check again: Full audit — A complete subsequent full audit can establish a same-page fix. Missing capture, ambiguous declarations or unsupported text cannot prove a fix.
Limits & sources
The reference budgets are product review conventions, not Google limits or guaranteed truncation points.
This rule compares the normalised character count, not the width of a search snippet.
Unsupported glyphs, shaping, bidirectional text, incomplete HTML or ambiguous declarations are could-not-check coverage.
A description with 70 or more supported characters does not fire this rule; that alone does not establish that the summary is useful.
Confidence: High High confidence describes an exact supported reference measurement. It does not claim confidence in Google rendering or a ranking effect.
Sources
- Google Search Central, Google snippets — Search presentation may use other content; Google does not define the numeric product budget. Checked 4 October 2026.
- Liberation Fonts, Liberation Fonts 2.1.5 release — The fixed font bytes and glyph advances used by the recorded measurement model. Checked 4 October 2026.
Editorial review: 2 November 2026