How to Measure the Effect of Fixing Your Meta Titles and Descriptions in Search Console

This is the final post in the series on the PrestaShop 8 meta counter. The first two covered the problem (the native 128/512 limits are not SEO targets) and the technical implementation (the open-source module). This third one is the method: how to audit the real state of your meta tags, prioritize rewrites without taking on the entire catalog, and measure the impact in Search Console without fooling yourself on attribution.

First: how many product pages have meta tags over the limit

Before touching anything, export your product meta tags with a direct database query. This one lists the longest first:

SELECT p.id_product, pl.meta_title, pl.meta_description,
       CHAR_LENGTH(pl.meta_title) AS len_title,
       CHAR_LENGTH(pl.meta_description) AS len_desc
FROM ps_product_lang pl
JOIN ps_product p ON p.id_product = pl.id_product
WHERE p.active = 1
  AND pl.id_lang = 1
  AND pl.id_shop = 1
ORDER BY len_title DESC
LIMIT 200;

With the results in hand, sort them into four buckets:

• Titles > 60 characters: candidates for truncation in the desktop SERP.
• Descriptions > 160 characters: candidates for a cut-off snippet, especially on mobile.
• Titles between 80 and 128: the worst ones. The team wrote them “inside the counter” in the BO, and Google chops them in half.
• Descriptions between 280 and 512: the mobile snippet stops at the first sentence.

One qualitative check worth doing by hand: in the long titles, look at where the long-tail keyword that differentiates the product sits. If it’s at the end, that’s exactly the part Google truncates. It’s the most common pattern when a team has spent years working to the “stay under 128” rule the native counter enforces — they were complying with the wrong rule.

Prioritize: rewrite the pages with traffic, not the whole catalog

In a large catalog, most product pages get no meaningful organic traffic. Rewriting everything is a waste of hours. A sensible order:

1. Cross-reference the query results with Search Console: keep the products above a monthly click threshold that makes sense for your volume (for example, pages that earn clicks consistently, not the odd one-off visit).
2. Sort by clicks, highest first. Truncation on a page that already gets clicks is visible money; on a page with no impressions, it’s irrelevant today.
3. Install the counter with real targets (60/160) so rewrites are written against the correct limit, not the native 128/512. That’s what the Zeyvro Meta Counter module does, right in the BO form.
4. Give your team a one-page reference sheet: the two limits, the color coding, and two or three good and bad examples from your own catalog. The real friction isn’t technical — it’s unlearning the old number. The first few products get written with the sheet in hand; after that, the new limit sticks on its own.

How to measure the impact without fooling yourself

This is where most audits fall apart: they change the meta tags, see any movement in Search Console, and take the credit. To measure with a minimum of rigor:

• Comparable windows. Compare a closed period after the rewrite is finished against the equivalent prior period — and if your niche is seasonal, against the same period last year, not the previous month.
• Measure only the group of pages you touched. Filter Search Console by the rewritten URLs. The pages you didn’t touch are your natural control group: if they rise just as much as the ones you did, the credit belongs to the algorithm or to seasonality, not to your meta tags.
• CTR is the metric that responds first. Fixing truncation doesn’t change your relevance: it changes what the user sees in the SERP. Impressions and position take much longer to move and depend on factors you don’t control.
• Verify the visual truncation, not just the length. Search Google for your rewritten pages (site: operator + product name) and check that the title displays in full. Google measures in pixels, not characters — 60 is an approximation; the visual check is the real one.
• Track how many descriptions Google rewrites. When Google replaces your meta description with a snippet of its own, it’s usually a sign it considers yours unhelpful for the query — running long and getting cut mid-sentence is a common trigger. Compare a sample of SERPs before and after: if Google starts using your descriptions as written once you’ve trimmed them to 160, the change is working.

What to expect (and what not to)

No promised numbers — every store starts from a different place, and the impact depends on how many of your pages were truncated and how much traffic they get. What is consistent:

• The lever is CTR, not position. A complete title and a description that isn’t cut off before the selling point make more people click from the same spot in the SERP. If you’re after ranking gains, this change is not the instrument.
• The impact is proportional to the prior damage. If your initial audit finds half the traffic-earning catalog truncated, there’s real headroom; if it finds three pages, the result will be marginal.
• It’s one of the cheapest changes in ecommerce SEO. The module is free and rewrites take minutes per page — the bulk of the cost is team discipline, not technology.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to see the effect of fixing your meta tags?

CTR is the first metric to move, as soon as Google recrawls the pages and updates the snippet — usually days or a few weeks. Average position and impressions take longer and depend on factors unrelated to your meta tags.

Why does Google rewrite my meta descriptions?

Because it decides the one you wrote doesn’t answer that specific query well. A description that runs past 160 characters and gets truncated mid-sentence is a common trigger; once you trim it to the real limit, Google tends to use it as written.

How do I check whether a title is truncated in the SERP?

Search Google for the page with the site: operator plus the product name and look at the actual result. Google cuts by pixels, not characters, so the visual check is the definitive one; 60 characters is the working reference.

Is the native PrestaShop counter (128/512) useless?

It works as a technical database limit, not as an SEO target. Google displays roughly 60 characters of a title and 160 of a description; writing against 128/512 produces meta tags that get truncated in the SERP.

Zeyvro builds modules for PrestaShop 8 from a real store running in production. Unobfuscated code.