Trakis

Trakis · Rules

Meta description outside the useful range

Meta descriptions shorter than 50 or longer than 160 characters. Too short says nothing; too long is cut off in the results. Between 50 and 160 characters, the whole sentence is shown.

NoticeONPAGE-005 · On-page · checked on every page

Where it usually comes from

Descriptions pasted from the first lines of the page, or generated from product data without a length limit.

How to fix it

  • Write a meta description of 70–155 characters for each page: what the reader finds there and why to click.
  • Where there are many pages of one kind, build it in the template from the page's own data rather than repeating one sentence.
pattern
<meta name="description" content="{{ page.summary | truncate: 155 }}">

Shown for an example shop at www.example.com. In a Trakis report the same fix comes with your own addresses and the list of your pages it applies to.

How to check it yourself

Count the characters of the description in the page source; many SEO plugins show a length meter while editing.

What it looks like in a report

Notice The meta description is 212 characters (useful: 50–160).

The end of the sentence will not be shown; the first 160 characters should carry the point. (An example shop; the numbers are illustrative.)

How the audit counts it

ONPAGE-005 is a notice in the on-page category, and weighs lightly in that category’s score. When it appears on many pages built from the same template, the report shows it once, with the number of pages it covers — because one change in the template fixes all of them.

If the finding is deliberate on your site, it can be accepted as intentional in the report. It then leaves the list and the score, and comes back on its own if what it shows changes.

Other on-page checks

Find it on your site

A Trakis audit runs this check and the other 65 on your site, and tells you on how many pages each one sits. Or go back to all the rules.