What is the ideal word count for a meta description?
For everyday English, a meta description word count of about 20 to 25 words works well. That isn't a Google rule. Google sets no word or character limit for meta descriptions and trims snippets to fit the screen, so word count matters only because it predicts length. Twenty to 25 words of plain prose usually comes to about 105 to 150 characters, which fits the targets in our meta description character limit guide. If your vocabulary runs long, as technical writing does, the same number of words can go far past that.
How many words fit each meta description length
Most people asking how many words should be in a meta description want a number for their CMS field. This table uses the 5.18 characters per word of plain English measured in the worked example further down, rounded down.
| Target | Characters | Words at 5.18 characters each |
|---|---|---|
| Safe mobile target | 115 | 22 |
| Typical mobile cut-off | 120 | 23 |
| Safe desktop target | 150 | 28 |
| Typical desktop cut-off | 155 to 160 | 29 to 30 |
Those are upper ends for short, everyday words. With longer words the figure drops quickly, which is why the quick answer above says 20 to 25. The character figures come from the meta description length guide; Google itself publishes none.
Words, characters and pixels measure different things
You can measure a description three ways, and they drift apart for different reasons:
| Measure | What it counts | Why it drifts |
|---|---|---|
| Words | Groups of letters separated by spaces | A word can be 2 letters or 15 |
| Characters | Every letter, digit, space and punctuation mark | A capital W is over four times as wide as a lowercase i in Arial |
| Pixels | The width the text takes up on screen | Depends on font, size and device, and Google publishes no figure |
Google's snippet documentation says the snippet "is truncated in Google Search results as needed, typically to fit the device width." Width is what runs out. Characters are a decent stand-in for width, and words are a rougher stand-in for characters.
Worked example: 22 words, four different lengths
Every version below has exactly 22 words. Characters are counted the way the Character Counter counts them, and width is measured in Arial at 14 pixels, the font and size the site's SERP Preview uses for descriptions.
| Version | Words | Characters | Width at 14px Arial |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Plain sentence | 22 | 114 | 717 px |
| 2. The same sentence in Title Case | 22 | 114 | 763 px |
| 3. The same sentence in capitals | 22 | 114 | 948 px |
| 4. Technical vocabulary | 22 | 202 | 1,271 px |
Version 1 reads: "See how long a meta description should be, why the cut-off moves, and how to check yours with a free preview tool." Version 4 reads: "Generate standards-compliant JSON-LD structured data for organizations, products, articles, breadcrumbs, recipes, events and frequently asked questions with an interactive, free browser-based generator."
The first three have the same words and the same character count, yet the all-caps version is 32% wider than the plain one. The fourth matches the first on word count and is 88 characters longer, because its average word is almost 8 letters against about 4. A 22-word target would have passed all four.
Turning a word target into characters
Each word costs its letters plus one space, plus a little for punctuation. So characters come to roughly words × (average word length + 1). Turn that around and the number of words that fit a character budget is the budget divided by (average word length + 1).
| Average word length | Characters per word | Words in 150 characters | Words in 115 characters |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 letters | 5 | 30 | 23 |
| 4.5 letters | 5.5 | 27 | 20 |
| 5 letters | 6 | 25 | 19 |
| 5.5 letters | 6.5 | 23 | 17 |
| 6 letters | 7 | 21 | 16 |
| 7 letters | 8 | 18 | 14 |
The word counts are rounded down, and that matters because punctuation pushes real text a little over the formula. Version 1 above averages about 4 letters a word, so the formula predicts about 5 characters per word. The real figure is 5.18, because two commas, a hyphen and a full stop add four characters the formula doesn't see.
Finding your own average word length
- Paste a few descriptions you've already written, or the page's intro, into the Word Counter. Once there's text in the box, it shows the average word length below it, counting letters and digits only.
- Add 1 and divide your character target by the result. With an average of 5.2 letters and a 150-character target, that's 150 / 6.2, or 24 words.
- Write the description, then paste it into the Character Counter. Its meta description bar shows how close you are to about 155 characters.
- Preview it in SERP Preview. The description box accepts up to 160 characters and warns above 155. It counts characters rather than measuring pixels, so leave some room if your text has a lot of capitals.
Meta description word count in real examples
To see how much characters per word vary in practice, I counted two descriptions from Google's snippet documentation and three made-up ones from our guide to writing meta descriptions that get clicks and its companion posts. Words are split on spaces, as the Word Counter does.
| Description | Words | Characters | Characters per word |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google's sewing shop example | 17 | 108 | 6.35 |
| Google's mechanical pencil example | 25 | 195 | 7.80 |
| Stoneware mug product page | 24 | 147 | 6.12 |
| Snake plant article | 31 | 146 | 4.71 |
| Leeds plumber service page | 23 | 149 | 6.48 |
The snake plant article and the plumber page are almost the same length in characters, yet one has 31 words and the other 23. The article is built from short words ("how to", "when to do it"); the service page is full of nouns and a price. Google's pencil example has 25 words, inside the usual range, and is still 195 characters, well past what a desktop result shows.
Product and service descriptions tend to run 6 or more characters per word because they carry names, numbers and units. If that's your page type, plan on about 20 to 23 words for 150 characters.
Word counts depend on the counter
Even the word count isn't fixed. The Word Counter splits text on spaces, so "SEO-friendly" is one word. The Character Counter uses the browser's word segmenter, which in current browsers splits "SEO-friendly" and "150-160" into two words each. "InDemand Tools' free SEO-friendly meta tag generator, 2026 edition." comes out as 9 words in one tool and 10 in the other. Both give the same character count, 67, because plain text without emoji is counted the same way in each. That's one more reason to treat meta description word count as a drafting aid and set your final limit in characters.
The front-loading principle
Since you never know exactly where Google will truncate your text, I always put the most important information in the first 10 to 12 words. If the user only reads the first half of your description, will they still know what you offer? If not, rewrite it.
Word length decides how much room those first words take. In version 1 the first 12 words use 65 characters, under half of a 150-character budget. In version 4 they use 120, which leaves 30 characters for everything else.
Why less is more for mobile
On a phone, a dense 160-character block can look like a wall of text. For pages that get most of their visits on mobile, I prefer shorter descriptions of around 120 characters. At the 5.18 characters per word of version 1, that's about 23 words; at 6 characters per word, about 20.
Frequently asked questions
What if my description is too short?
Google may build the snippet from your page content instead. Its documentation uses the two-word description "Mechanical pencil" as an example of one that's too short. A short, accurate description is still better than a long, irrelevant one, but a full sentence leaves room for the detail that earns the click.
Do short words like "a" and "the" count?
Yes. Each one counts as a word and adds at least two characters with its space. Cutting filler words is one of the quickest ways to bring your meta description word count, and its length, under a limit.
How many words should be in a meta description for mobile?
About 18 to 24. Phones usually show around 120 characters, and at 5 to 6.5 characters per word that's 18 to 24 words. Put the main point in the first 10 words so it survives on the smallest screens.
Should I count words or characters?
Draft with a word target if it helps, then check characters and preview the result. Characters are closer to what actually gets cut. For writing the words themselves, generating meta descriptions with AI shows how to edit a draft down to size, and for what a meta description is in the first place, see what is a meta description.
