Legend:

Yeah, that's just false.  Sorry, but not close to correct, at all.  I can prove this incorrect with every single search I do. 

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> The other issue is that MANY themes use the excerpt for the front page or other index type pages and they need more text than the 155 chars you'd want in a meta description...

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You know, this is the problem I have with like 95% of the "SEO" crap out there.  They're literally making stuff up out of nothing. 

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Where, exactly, did you get the "155 chars" from?  It's in no standards document.  There's nothing preventing you from putting more than that into there.  There's nothing anywhere on Google's site that says "we only read the first 155 chars". 

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Basically, the notion that 155 is what you want is complete nonsense.  You're extrapolating a "best practice" from anecdotal BS and from what Google currently does on some sites that you've witnessed. 

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If there was valuable information beyond 155 chars, then Google would take advantage of it.  The problem with "SEO" is that it's too limiting.  It relies on the current practices of search engines and doesn't have any sort of notion of creating what's best for people.  Create what's best for people and for *sanity* and Google will change their algorithms to accommodate it. 

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We should NOT be programming our code to accommodate what Google does.  We should be programming it to be *correct*, and then let Google adapt to US.