Meta Description Lengths?

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Err on the side of caution where there is any doubt at all. No-one really know if Google use this in some capacity, so take no chances and keep it all clean.

-Andy

[Your_Workshop]

We always stick with around 155 characters with the most important information in the first 60. This is because if Google decides to show big sitelinks, your meta descriptions will get truncated even further, thus showing less characters.

You are correct that meta descriptions have no weight on ranking. But, CTR does and this can be directly impacted by your meta description. Therefore, they continue to be worth your time to do them well. I personally don't think spending time writing over 155 characters is worth it because the chances of Google displaying these extra characters (at least in a way that will appear clean) is slim. You are better off letting them determine what to show based on user query and  page content at that point.

[CSawatzky]

Thanks, guys.

On that note, do you worry about branding in the meta description for non-brand queries?

[Your_Workshop]

We generally keep our branding in the page titles as the suffix and focus on keyword matching in the meta descriptions.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

I would only do this if it sits with the general theme of what is being said. Don't just try to make it fit just so it's in there.

-Andy

[CSawatzky]

Makes sense guys. Thank you.

[Linda-Vassily]

Meta descriptions play an important role whether or not they are counted in ranking. When done well, they can cause a searcher to click on your result over the others. If the clever description you write for your page is too long, it will get truncated or Google might choose to show something else entirely (which it might do anyway, especially depending on the search term). I like to use this tool when writing page titles and descriptions: http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html  It allows you to see what your result might look like in Google's serps (it uses 70 characters as the allowed title length and 156 as the allowed description length).

[ChadC]

Official Google does truncate at around 160 so i usually shoot for that. I mean after all if our goal is to always do things that are useful for the web, I have to question how useful it is to go beyond what Google will use in search,  but there is no penalty for going over 160 characters.

[AlanMosley]

Bing says 150,

http://thatsit.com.au/seo/reports/violation/the-description-is-too-long

[Party_Experts]

Hit the nail on the head here!  It's all about improving click through rates, and enticing the user to click through, after reading an enticing meta description