Change in Meta Description - 320 to 160

[HuptechWebseo]

Why google showing only 160 Char, instead of 320? Is there any official announcement from @Google?

I have noticed form last week in Google SERP, Description is showing 160 again.

Please help me with valuable information.

[Dr-Pete]

Danny confirmed a change today, but didn't provide much detail (just that some display snippets are shorter). Anecdotally, we're definitely seeing a change. We're collecting data now and should have more to say later in the week. Trying to get some measurements across a larger data set so that we can give people solid information.

[HuptechWebseo]

Thank you for reply,

Please update us if you have some important information on this.

[Dr-Pete]

I've got a blog post going up tomorrow morning, but the short answer is that it looks like Google has reverted to the previous limit (roughly 155 characters). There are a small % of display snippets with >300 characters, but those are exceptions to the rule and seem to be connected somewhat to Featured Snippets. In most cases, those >300 descriptions are pulled from page content.

[zethzeth]

Do you have a link to that article?

... I can see that Shopify suggests having desciprtion-tags there are 320 characters long, - but that gives an issue in the Moz-tool...

[Dr-Pete]

Sure do

How to Write Meta Descriptions in a Constantly Changing World