Google Descriptions are Shorter

Google shortened the description in the SERPS.

[Pradyumna]

I could see that over a period of 15 days to 1 month google has shortened the description of all the listings. I could see that apart from the top 1 or two maximum listings their is only a one line description about the site.

I am unable to notice the reason behind this.

[BigJay]

It looks to me that they might be a bit shorter, but I cannot see a significant change..

However even if the algorithm drops 5 to 10% of the description, think about the savings in bandwidth..

just 1 byte. 1 byte * 10 listings ( default ) * 100,000,000 searches a day. That's 1 billion bytes less a day that they need to transfer.

it allows for more searches, without needing to buy more equipment.

I also noticed this trend when they redesigned the serps last year...

[Lord Majestic]

That's 1 billion bytes less a day that they need to transfer.

1 Gig of trasfer costs about as much as they earn from 2-3 clicks, in fact for bulk buyers like themselves 0.5 of click should do. I don't think G-men even think in terms of giga- these days.

[BigJay]

whether it's giga, tera, or peta, it's still bandwidth.

why else shorten the descriptions?

[rj87uk]

I think you lot are thinking too hard.

It just looks nice and neat. Dont you think?

[sja65]

Do a search for "site:sitename.com"
notice the very short descriptions.

Note the full title of one of the pages returned, then
do a search for "site:sitename.com TitleOfPage"

The same page now has a longer description.

[No5needinput]

Yesterday one site of mine had an alt tag text as the description.

The alt tag was the first text on the page and was for the site logo 3 words long -
"blah blah logo"

Today its back to a 19 word ransom note description.

[steveb]

I suspect that as part of experimenting with meta description or dmoz description that those pages without either will get a pithier ransom note to be more consistent with the meta/dmoz style.