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How long should a meta description be

Anything past roughly 160 characters is cut off mid-sentence in the result. Anything much shorter leaves empty space a competitor's listing will fill.

What 13x checks

This is rule metadata.description-length in the public registry: Meta descriptions are a usable length. It runs on every audit, against the pages we actually fetched, and its result is derived from the response rather than estimated.

Surface
Metadata
Score weight
4 of the readiness score
Scope
Reported as skipped when the page renders only with JavaScript
Applies
To every site

Registry version 2026-07-30. Every rule is published, and the audit is deterministic — the same page produces the same finding every time.

The fix

The same text the audit hands you when this check fails on your own site.

Trim or expand the affected descriptions to 70–160 characters. Anything longer is cut mid-sentence in the result; anything much shorter leaves space a competitor's snippet fills.

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