Search results show roughly the first 155–160 characters of a meta description and cut off the rest, so a long description loses its ending — often the part that tells people why to click.
Why Joomla sites get it
Joomla puts no limit on the Meta Description field, and descriptions pasted from a brief or copied from the intro text are easily two or three sentences long. Descriptions written by extensions or AI tools can overshoot too.
Fix it by hand
- Open the article and go to the Publishing tab.
- Rewrite the Meta Description to 160 characters or fewer, keeping the point of the page at the start.
- Save.
Fix it with MetaGen
The Meta description too long row in MetaGen’s SEO tune-up panel counts descriptions over 160 characters. Fix regenerates just those, to a length that fits, and leaves every description that is already within the limit alone. The Fix over-length button does the same for descriptions and titles together.
MetaGen is free for Joomla 5 and 6. See all the SEO warnings MetaGen checks.
