[null,null,[],[[["\u003cp\u003eSearch result snippets help users decide whether to visit a webpage, similar to how book synopses help readers decide on a book.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eHistorically, snippets were derived from page content, meta descriptions, and DMOZ listings, but with DMOZ closed, good meta descriptions are crucial.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eGood meta descriptions are concise and accurate summaries of the page content, acting as a pitch to entice users.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eCommon meta description issues include being empty, duplicated across pages, or irrelevant, leading to a poor user search experience.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eWhile there's no strict character limit for meta descriptions, search result snippets are truncated to fit device widths.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],["Search result snippets help users decide if a page is relevant to their query. Snippets were sourced from page content, meta descriptions, and DMOZ listings. With DMOZ closed, meta descriptions are crucial. Good meta descriptions are accurate, concise pitches for the page's content. Common problems include missing, duplicate, or low-quality meta descriptions. While there's no character limit, snippets are truncated. The `NOODP` rule is inactive, and the `nosnippet` rule can prevent snippet generation.\n"],null,["# Better Snippets for your Users\n\nFriday, June 02, 2017\n| It's been a while since we published this blog post. Some of the information may be outdated (for example, some images may be missing, and some links may not work anymore). For up-to-date information, see our documentation about [how to control your sippets in search results](/search/docs/appearance/snippet).\n\n\nBefore buying a book, people like to get a snapshot of how they're about to spend a few hours\nreading. They'll take a look at the synopsis, the preface, or even the prologue just to get a\nsense about whether they'll like the book.\n\n\nSearch result snippets are much the same; they help people decide whether or not it makes sense\nto invest the time reading the page the snippet belongs to.\n\n\nThe more descriptive and relevant a search result snippet is, the more likely that people will\nclick through and be satisfied with the page they land on. Historically, snippets came from 3\nplaces:\n\n1. The content of the page\n2. The meta description\n3. DMOZ listings\n\n\nThe content of the page is an obvious choice for result snippets, and the content that can be\nextracted is often the most relevant to people's queries. However, there are times when the\ncontent itself isn't the best source for a snippet. For instance, when someone searches for a\npublishing company for their book, the relevant home pages in the result set may contain only a\nfew images describing the businesses and a logo, and maybe some links, none of which are\nparticularly useful for a snippet.\n\n\nThe logical fallback in cases when the content of a page doesn't have much textual content for\na search result snippet is the meta description. This should be short blurbs that describe\naccurately and precisely the content in a few words.\n\n\nFinally, when a page doesn't have much textual content for snippet generation and the meta\ndescription is missing, unrelated to the page, or low quality, our fallback was\n[DMOZ, also known as The Open Directory Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMOZ).\nFor over 10 years, we relied on DMOZ for snippets because the quality of the DMOZ snippets were\noften much higher quality than those provided by webmasters in their meta description, or were\nmore descriptive than what the page provided.\n\n\nWith DMOZ [now closed](https://www.dmoz.org/), we've stopped using its\nlistings for snippeting, so it's a lot more important that webmasters provide good meta\ndescriptions, if adding more content to the page is not an option.\n\n**What makes a good meta description?**\n\n\nGood meta descriptions are short blurbs that describe accurately the content of the page. They\nare like a pitch that convince the user that the page is exactly what they're looking for. For\nmore tips, we have a handy\n[help center article](/search/docs/appearance/snippet) on the topic. Remember\nto make sure that both your desktop and your mobile pages include both a title and a meta\ndescription.\n\n**What are the most common problems with meta descriptions?**\n\n\nBecause meta descriptions are usually visible only to search engines and other software,\nwebmasters sometimes forget about them, leaving them completely empty. It's also common, for\nthe same reason, that the same meta description is used across multiple (and sometimes many)\npages. On the flip side, it's also relatively common that the description is completely\noff-topic, low quality, or outright spammy. These issues tarnish our users' search experience,\nso we prefer to ignore such meta descriptions.\n\n**Is there a character limit for meta descriptions?**\n\n\nThere's no limit on how long a meta description can be, but the search result snippets are\ntruncated as needed, typically to fit the device width.\n\n\n**What will happen with the `NOODP` robots rule?**\n\n\nWith DMOZ (ODP) closed, we stopped relying on its data and thus the `NOODP` rule is already\nno-op.\n\n**Can I prevent Google from using the page contents as snippet?**\n\n\nYou can prevent Google from generating snippets altogether by specifying the\n[`nosnippet` robots rule](/search/docs/crawling-indexing/robots-meta-tag#nosnippet).\nThere's no way to prevent using page contents as snippet while allowing other sources.\n\n\nAs always, if you have questions, ask in the\n[forums](https://support.google.com/webmasters/community) or find us\non [Twitter](https://twitter.com/googlesearchc/)!\n\n\nPosted by [Gary Illyes](https://garyillyes.com/+), Search Team"]]
