Meta description checker. Length, CTA, truncation.

Length sits in a 120-155 character sweet spot. Below 120, you waste the snippet real estate users see in the SERP. Above 155, the description truncates with an ellipsis on most viewports. Mobile cuts off around 920 pixels (~120 chars), desktop around 990 pixels (~160 chars). Hit the middle.

Pixel width is the actual constraint. We measure the rendered width using the browser's canvas API (Arial 14px, the SERP body font). The 920-pixel mobile threshold is what mobile-first indexing uses — and mobile is the canonical rendering for ranking, so the mobile gauge is the one to optimize against first.

Action verb presence tells you whether the description has CTA energy. Descriptions that read like a passive summary ("This page is about...") draw lower CTR than descriptions that tell the user what they can do ("Get a free quote", "Book a call", "Try the calculator"). The checker scans against an 80-word imperative-verb list and reports any matches found.

Primary keyword position matters because Google bolds matching terms in the rendered snippet, drawing the eye. Keyword in the first half of the description gets bolded close to where the user is reading; keyword at the end is past the natural skim point. Front-load.

Sentence count is a readability proxy. One long compound sentence is hard to skim; four short ones are choppy. Two or three sentences hits the readability sweet spot — a one-sentence claim followed by a one-sentence proof or CTA reads cleanly in a SERP.

Trailing punctuation is small but signals intentional writing. Descriptions that end mid-sentence look truncated even when they fit. Always end on a period (or, sparingly, an exclamation point or question mark).

Generic phrases like "learn more" and "click here" are the lowest-CTR copy patterns in the SERP. Specific is better: "Read the 8-minute guide" beats "learn more"; "Run the audit in 30 seconds" beats "find out". The checker flags 7 generic phrases for replacement.