Have you noticed a change in Google’s SERPs lately? If you haven’t already noticed, Google has made a significant change to the search results column by increasing its width from 500 pixels to 600 pixels and the amount of white space has decreased by 5 pixels from 65 pixels to only 60 pixels. But the question is why should we care about the sudden increase in width to search results? The answer, an increase to the amount of characters used for Meta titles and descriptions.
Meta Titles & Descriptions
It has been reported that Google is testing an increase of characters to meta titles and descriptions. In recent findings, title tags have been increased to 70-71 characters from its original length of 60 characters and meta descriptions have been increased 100 characters per line which brings the total amount of characters available to around 278. This added space is enough to fit a few more keywords in our meta title and provides more opportunities for SEO managers to describe their specific page in meta descriptions.
Is It Permanent?
It is hard to say whether this update to meta-data is a temporary experiment for Googles SERPs or if it is a function that will soon be permanent and available to all search results. It is best to hold off on updating your meta data until we know for sure that this update is here to stay.
