Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.
Chris M Cloutier: Are Google's descriptions getting shorter? ;I noticed my 150 character description is cut off in the serps. ;I thought we had 160. ;Has it changed?
Jim Munro: I'm not sure, Chris, but I think it's been pixel-width for ;a while. It's dependent on the characters you have used.
Chris M Cloutier: Oh now that you say that o do remember hearing that. Thanks Jim.
Dave Elliott: moz and screaming frogs both have serp preview tools which are very useful
Ryan Cramer: I tested something out over the past couple months. After being anal about keeping my title and description down to 60/160, I switched back to having a keyword rich action focused phrase and placement and visitors improved. True in the SERPS your title and description may be truncated, but if you saw, "Click here for the most awesome de..." you'd be ok to click on it if it placed, right? (btw. that would never place because there are no keywords in the BEGINNING of the phrase)
Chris M Cloutier: +Ryan Cramer ;So are you saying you stopped worrying about length entirely? ;Did you write about your findings anywhere? ;I'd love to read it if you did.
Ryan Cramer: I guess after doing this for almost 20 years, I've realized that most "SEO"s are just marketing dropouts that got a computer for their birthday, and since they know how to sell their concept, most of us mindless drones keep repeating their dren.
Check out this old video of Matt Cutts explaining how they put together the search results, then look to see how many results that place for your keyword phrase are being truncated and decide for yourself - ;Snippets and Titles
btw. I've had a 10% increase in non-bounce and 30% increase of overall visitors by implementing this simple concept
Chris M Cloutier: I really don't get how this ties into the question. ;I mean, I've already got an answer and your help is appreciated but I don't get it. ;Having a keyword and a CTA in the description is fairly common I think, no matter what the length. ;The video from Matt just talked about how they change titles and descriptions. ;But I don't think that matters when you're forcing the description. ;i could be wrong.
Ryan Cramer: My reference to the "marketing dropouts" was because of the general "keep it simple stupid" concept of the 60 character limit, as well as the lazy "WYSIWYG" mentality - that Google only shows 60 characters, thus 60 characters is the hardened limit.
The point of the video was to show you that there is a greater importance weighed on the keywords than the length. ;You get extra points if the keywords are in the title or description, because Google does not have to do harder work, as Matt Cutts explained. ;The "snippet" technology works within the title as well, which you will see more of now that you know.
One marketing concept that should be applied to SEO is "ROI"... if you spend a lot of time limiting your characters and are not getting the value for it, then you have a low Return on Investment. ;
What I've done is make sure that within the first 60 characters I have my first and maybe second key phrase plus a call to action, then complete my second and maybe third keyphrase and whatever I need to make it unique.
Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 01:20:48 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/are_googles_descriptions_getting_shorter +Chris M Cloutier
The cuetimes listed on this page are functional while the live broadcast continues and also once Youtube has finished processing the public broadcast. Processing time varies between 6-24 hours. During this period the clip is viewable in full but the cuetimes cannot be relied on. ;
If our assistance with this issue was useful to you, please consider sharing your success story so that others might benefit.
Edwin Jonk: P.S. Google doesn't count the number of characters, it is based on pixels I got 496 px (two lines), font-family: arial, sans-serif, ;font-size: 13px;. ;
Chris M Cloutier: Thanks +Edwin Jonk ;that's really helpful. ;I'll play with mine and figure out what I get. ;Thanks everyone +Edwin Jonk ;+Jim Munro ;+Ryan Cramer ;and +Dave Elliott ;
Brand & Mortar: Pixel width is correct. Threw us off as well; wasn't sure when this became a thing, but it totally got some people off guard.
Ryan Cramer: Perhaps we're looking at this wrong. ;Instead of saying, "Due to pixel dimensions shown on the SERPs we should limit our titles to 60 characters and descriptions to (now) 150 characters", maybe we should be asking about placement results. ;If I may ask a few questions: 1. How many of you have seen measurely positive results from keeping within these limitations? 2. How many of you have seen measurely negative results from keeping these limitations? 3. How may of you have been penalized for going over these limitations? I'd be interested to know the answers to these questions, as it might help our friend +Chris M Cloutier ;with his concern of the change in the SERPs
Dave Elliott: I see what you are saying Ryan. And sort of agree. I aim to be in the correct pixel width but if the odd page is over then I would never sacrifice an important keyword or title consistency just to have a non truncated title. But I very much would prefer to be within width than over. It looks sloppy and while it may not affect your ranking(I seem to recall that google reads longer titles than it displays) I'm sure it will affect ctr.
Edwin Jonk: +Dave Elliott ;I don't think the meta description is used for ranking. With regard to the title I fully agree. However the title has 512 px with font-size 18 px. ;
Dave Elliott: ahh yeah, i was talking about titles rather than descriptions really. No excuse for descriptions to be over the limit.
Chris M Cloutier: I see what you're saying now +Ryan Cramer ;You're right, I would never sacrifice a good cta or keyword to to stay within the designated length. ;However I would work harder to find a solution that for all three. (length, cta and keyword) ;This may be for another conversation but I'd probably sacrifice my keyword before the cta. (description only)
As far as titles go, I personally have never had a problem getting them truncated. ;But it is something I think about when writing them. ;But, if it were to happen, I'd treat same as the description but without sacrificing my keyword.
Lori Eldridge: It's also dependent on the font used and if you use capitals or not.
Jackson Ertel: Don't believe keywords in description have any ranking effect at all. They do however impact on CTR by perceived relevancy to the user. Re length, why would you aim to have a description that is longer than the maximum SERPS could display? What's the point?
Ryan Cramer: I don't know if I'd say keywords and descriptions have no ranking effect, +Jackson Ertel ;However, you are right on about how important it is to the CTR. ;I know that if I search for something, I'm more apt to click on the result that has what I searched for. ;I think the search engines know this, and will continue to place high value on the title (even if they ignore the description and keywords)
Chris M Cloutier: I agree that they don't have an impact on ranking directly but CTR definitely does. That's why I try to craft the best descriptions I can. ;I figure if I do so, the higher my CTR will be and that will ultimately lead to higher rankings.
This is an area of SEO that has always been interesting to me. ;I'll be talking about all the help all of you gave tonight during my hangout. Thanks,
John Britsios: Titles and descriptions were never measured by Google in characters when it was about how they would be displayed in the SERPs.
+Tony McCreath did a great job on this: https://websiteadvantage.com.au/Google-SERP-Emulator
Edwin Jonk: I love Tony's web apps. However the OP asks for meta description and I am pretty sure it is determined by pixels rather then characters (as you already said). But the web app uses characters for meta description.
Maybe +Tony McCreath ;could update his great tool? ;-)
Tony McCreath: I've never got round to testing how long the description snippet is. I think its a lot more complex than the title as there are variations. Dates, anchor links and list formats come to mind.
Tony McCreath: Maybe they shrunk the description down so they can fit in the new Authorship layout
Are Google`s descriptions getting shorter? I noticed my 150 character description is cut off in the serps. I thought we had 160. Has it changed?? 
