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Free check · Meta descriptions

Meta description checker

Read the meta descriptions on a page and the pages it links to. Find missing, empty, duplicated and repeated description tags, and see each one's length without an invented limit.

Loads the URL you enter and the home page, then pages they link to, up to 15 pages in all. Free, no account needed.

What the checker reads

Enter a page and the checker loads it, the home page and the pages they link to, fifteen pages in all. On each it reads every meta element named description, wherever the parser placed it, and reports the text, its length in characters and the line it sits on. Descriptions are compared after whitespace and letter case are normalized, so two pages that differ only in capitalization still count as duplicates. nosnippet and max-snippet rules, which limit what a search result may show, appear beside each page.

What a meta description is for

Google describes the element as a summary written for people choosing between results:

“A meta description tag generally informs and interests users with a short, relevant summary of what a particular page is about.”

[G-SNIPPET] Best practices for creating quality meta descriptions

It is not where snippets start. “If you don't have time to create a description for every single page, try to prioritize your content; at the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your home page and popular pages.”[G-SNIPPET] A page without a description still gets a snippet, so the checker never reports a missing one as a failure. It lists it as a practice to add, which the full audit scores as an opportunity: it costs points the way a failure would, but nothing on the page is broken.

What Google asks of a description is brief and concrete: “A good meta description is short, unique to one particular page, and includes the most relevant points of the page.”[G-STARTER] The text need not be prose, either. “The meta description doesn't just have to be in sentence format; it's also a great place to include information about the page.”[G-SNIPPET] Where time is short, Google suggests an order of work:

“If you don't have time to create a description for every single page, try to prioritize your content; at the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your home page and popular pages.”

[G-SNIPPET] Create unique descriptions for each page on your site

Microsoft's guidance on AI search answers points the same way: “Descriptions help AI and users understand context. Avoid keyword stuffing and instead explain value or outcome.”[MS-AI-ANSWERS]

About length

The checker shows each description's length and stops there. No primary source sets a character count, and the figure many audit tools enforce is contradicted by Google itself. Both rows come from the scanner's myth guard:

From the myth guard, which lists every claim the scanner refuses to score and why.
ClaimVerdictWhat the source says
Meta descriptions must be about 155 to 160 charactersContradicted"There's no limit on how long a meta description can be" [G-SNIPPET]
A missing meta description is an errorNot supportedSnippets "are primarily created from the page content itself"; the scanner reports a missing description as an opportunity (SEO-META-02C), never as a failure [G-SNIPPET]

“Short” is the only size guidance on record, from the starter guide quoted above. Treat the count as a prompt to reread a description that has grown into a paragraph or a keyword list, the case Google singles out:

“Keep in mind that meta descriptions comprised of long strings of keywords don't give users a clear idea of the page's content, and are less likely to be displayed as a snippet.”

[G-SNIPPET] Programmatically generate descriptions

Common meta description problems

One description copied across the site

Templates that fall back to a sitewide default produce this on every page that lacks its own text. “Identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site aren't helpful when individual pages appear in search results.”[G-SNIPPET] Google's alternative is specific: “create descriptions that accurately describe the specific page. Use site-level descriptions on the main home page or other aggregation pages, and use page-level descriptions everywhere else.”[G-SNIPPET] Leaving the field empty is better than repeating a default.

Two description tags on one page

It happens when a theme and a plugin each print their own. The HTML Standard allows one: “There must not be more than one meta element where the name attribute value is an ASCII case-insensitive match for description per document.”[WHATWG-SEM]

An empty content attribute

The tag is present and says nothing. The checker treats content="" exactly like a missing description: something to add, not something broken.

A description Google cannot read

A URL that robots.txt blocks can still be indexed from links elsewhere, but its description is never read, and “the search result won't have a description”[G-ROBOTS-INTRO]. The robots.txt checker shows which of your URLs are blocked. Duplicate URLs are a separate source of repeated descriptions, and the canonical tag checker shows which version each page declares.

Rewriting descriptions

This checker reports; it does not write. For rewrites built from a page's own content, the full scanner offers an optional advisory AI review. Its suggestions are labeled as model output, never set a character target, and never touch the score.

The rules this checker runs

Each is a rule from the full ruleset, run by the same evaluator, with the same reason templates and citations. A rule's page lists its fail conditions and the passages it rests on. Informational rules (C4) never produce an issue.

  • SEO-META-02AAt most one meta description per pageC3 Standard· w2
  • SEO-META-02BMeta descriptions are page-specificC2 Recommended· w4
  • SEO-META-02CPages carry a meta descriptionC2 Recommended· w4
  • SEO-META-04Snippet controls in useC4 Informational· w0

Primary sources

The documentation this page and its rules rest on, with the date each page showed and the date its wording was last checked. The source registry lists every source the scanner may cite.

This page checks one thing. The full audit runs all 70 scored rules.

It covers 16 categories on up to 200 pages, orders the fixes by the strength of the evidence behind them and prints its score with the arithmetic. Every finding cites the primary source it rests on. No account is needed.

Run the full 70-rule audit