Meta Descriptions

How many can I have?

[Andromeda]

I'm in the process of designing a web site where there are two very different products being sold.

What would happen if I put 2 seperate meta desciptions on one page? Would it work? Is it advisable?

I read that 250 characters was the maximum for a description. Would people agree with this?

[Span]

No, two separate meta descriptions wouldn't work.. just use one.

You don't have those two different products on every page, do you? A meta description should only describe what is actually on that specific page.
If you have a page about product A, the meta description should describe product A.

250 characters is not an absolute maximum, I mean, don't go counting characters. Just put a short, keyword-rich description of the page in there.

[Andromeda]

Thanks Span. I'm learning so much from you guys. You are truly awesome.

[rjohara]

The meta-description element should contain a brief description of the page's content, as you already know - something like a one-sentence summary. As the previous poster noted, there isn't any technical restriction on its length, and different search engines and browsers may use the meta-description differently. One practical consideration, though, since Google is the most popular search engine at present, is that the Google snippet is usually limited to about 155 characters. If your meta-description is longer than that it may get indexed, but it will be cut off whenever it appears in the SERPs.

[Andromeda]

Hi rjohara. Thank you for your reply.

Can you please tell me what SERP stands for. I got the first two words but can't figure out the RP. Are there other abbreviations I should know? Is there a page I can go to look them up?

[swoop]

Search Engine Results Page

The page you see when doing a search.

[rjohara]

There's a good glossary of terms and abbreviations linked from the top of each page here - try it out and you'll find all sorts of helpful stuff.

[Andromeda]

Thanks. Just the info I need!.... on both accounts.