How long can rich snippets be?

[seoflorida]

How long (how many words) can a description tag of a rich snippets code?

[AlanBleiweiss]

Technically, there no set field length generally speaking depending on what you're using them for. A Google snippet truncates anything over 156 characters though in most situations.  What you put in the description COULD be used by their system to evaluate meaning though.

I would also say this - if the description "feels" like it's too long from a readability perspective, it's likely that you're not only not helping anything, and you could possibly be sending either diluted topical signals or worst case, signals that you're attempting to game the system.

Here's a good primer article on the topic.