How to fix meta description too short on Shopify
Expand every meta description to 120–160 characters so Google shows your custom summary in search results instead of auto-generating one.
Steps for Shopify
- For a product: Admin → Products → select the product → scroll to 'Search engine listing' section at the bottom → click 'Edit' → paste your new description into the 'Meta description' field (character counter is shown) → Save.
- For a collection: Admin → Products → Collections → select the collection → scroll to 'Search engine listing' → Edit → update Meta description → Save.
- For a page (e.g. About, FAQ): Admin → Online Store → Pages → select the page → scroll to 'Search engine listing' → Edit → update Meta description → Save.
- For the homepage: Admin → Online Store → Preferences → find 'Homepage meta description' → update → Save.
- For bulk updates across many products, use the free Shopify 'Bulk edit' feature: Products → select multiple products → Edit products → add the 'SEO Description' column.
<meta name="description" content="Discover our full range of handmade leather wallets — slim, durable, and personalised. Free UK shipping on all orders. Shop now and find your perfect wallet.">What is meta description too short?
A meta description is the short paragraph of text that appears beneath your page title in Google search results. It is written in your page's HTML and is meant to summarise the page's content in a way that encourages people to click. When a meta description is too short (under ~120 characters), it leaves Google with too little material to work with, and Google will often ignore it entirely and pull a random snippet of text from your page body — text that may be confusing, off-brand, or unhelpful to a potential customer.
Your meta description is prime real estate in search results: it is often the deciding factor between a shopper clicking your link or a competitor's. A well-crafted, full-length description (120–160 characters) can meaningfully lift your click-through rate, which drives more organic traffic and revenue without spending a penny more on ads. Google's own documentation confirms it uses meta descriptions as a source for search result snippets, so a weak description hands control of your messaging to an algorithm. For an ecommerce store, that can mean Google shows a price, a date, or boilerplate navigation text instead of your key selling point.
See the complete Meta description too short guide for every platform and the full background.
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