Rumours abound... The text you see with Google search results is at times longer than you would normally expect. Most rumours report that the length of the search snippet has been increased from 155 to 320 characters. But should you do anything with this? Should the meta description be longer?

Various parties indicate that increasingly longer texts are being shown in search results.

source: https: //www.rankranger.com/google-serp-features

Contrary to many rumours, there is no official confirmation (yet) from Google that the limit has actually been raised. The only response from Google is the following:

We recently made a change to provide more descriptive and useful snippets, to help people better understand how pages are relevant to their searches. This resulted in snippets becoming slightly longer, on average.

Official Google employees state that officially there has never been a length on the meta description.

https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/935462155364814848

Counting the number of characters in your meta description is also not seen by Google as a meaningful use of time.

https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/935471941682688005

In practice, there was a maximum number of characters. Sentences longer than 155 characters were, until recently, the wrong approach. So with the new update, there is no longer a "maximum number of characters". For now, it still seems like a good strategy to be careful about using more than 155 characters in your meta description.

Do we have to make all meta descriptions longer now?

No, not according to Google. When asked if it is indeed true that in some cases meta descriptions are longer, we get the following answer:

https://twitter.com/dannysullivan/status/936708405363843072

Until Google sends out an official message calling for longer meta descriptions, it is not wise to do this right now.

That snippets are very important for click-throughs from Google is obvious. Currently, it is still too unclear when the length of a meta description is longer than before (and whether longer meta descriptions are shown by default). The length most likely has to do with the content of the meta description in relation to the query in the search query.

To clarify: If the meta description does not contain any words that appear in the Google search query, Google itself will place a text in the search snippet that does contain those words. The self-completed meta description will not be used in this case. In that case, the text is also likely to be longer than the self-set 155 characters.

Just making all meta descriptions longer is not a good strategy (apart from the amount of work it generates).

It is wiser to wait for news from Google in which they will tell you more about how the search snippets are generated and what guidelines they propose. Until then, it is best to follow the current guidelines from Google: Composing effective titles and snippets for search results.