The text under the headline in Google

The description does not affect where you rank in Google, but it affects how many people click once you show up. More clicks from the same position is free traffic.

The customer compares three to five results in a few seconds. The one that says what you do, where you are and why to call wins.

Without your own description, Google may show a menu row or a cookie notice as the text.

• Write one or two sentences per page: what you do, where, and a reason to get in touch. Fixed price, quick start, whatever you can stand behind.
• Stay between 120 and 155 characters. Then all of it shows on a phone.
• Write different ones for different pages. The home page, the service page and the contact page sell different things.
• The description goes in the page settings, often next to the title. Ask whoever built the site if you cannot find the field.

Every page gets its own description before it is published, instead of a passage Google picks by itself. See what it costs.

If the description is missing, Google writes one for you. It picks a passage from the page that seems to fit the search, and that passage is rarely the one you would have chosen. A common situation is that the line under the headline becomes a menu row, an address or the start of a cookie notice.

The checker counts characters here too. 50 to 170 is green, outside that amber, and a missing description turns red. The check carries 10 of 100 points. Being the right length says nothing about whether it sells, which is a separate matter.

The short description is often a single sentence, usually the company name plus the word welcome. It fills the line without giving any reason to click. The long one is the opposite: the company's whole history in one paragraph, cut mid-sentence where Google stops showing it.

The description does not decide where you land in the results. It decides how many of those who already see you choose to click, and those are two quite different things to work on.

Does the description affect where I land in the results?

No, it is not a ranking factor. It affects how many people click once you are visible, which is a different thing but worth just as much in practice.

How many characters should I aim for?

The checker accepts 50 to 170 characters. If you want the whole text to show on a phone as well, stay in the lower half of that range.

Should I write the description for Google or for the customer?

For the customer. Google only displays it; it is a person who reads it and decides whether to click.