Google shows the wrong words under your business name: before and after

Search for a business and look at the grey text under its name. When the home page does not say what that text should be, Google picks some for it: often the menu, a cookie notice, an old opening-hours line or the footer. A customer comparing three plumbers reads that line before deciding which one to tap. In a check of 43,077 small-business home pages, 8,598 (20%) gave Google no description at all.

Before: no description, Google improvises

Rivera Plumbing

https://www.example.com

Rivera Plumbing - Home

After: one sentence you wrote

Rivera Plumbing

https://www.example.com

Rivera Plumbing - Emergency Plumber in Columbus, OH

Licensed plumbers in Columbus since 2009. Leaks, water heaters and drain clogs, same-day visits, upfront prices. Call (555) 010-0199.

What to write

One or two sentences, about 150 characters (longer gets cut off with "...").
What you do, where, and one reason to pick you: years, same-day, licensed, free quotes.
End with the action: call, book, get a quote. Every page can have its own; the home page matters most.

Where it goes, by platform

WordPress: install the free Yoast SEO or Rank Math plugin, open the home page in the editor, scroll to the plugin's box and fill in "Meta description". (Many themes have no field for it without a plugin.)
Wix: in the editor open Pages, click the three dots next to the page, then SEO basics, and fill in "Meta description".
Squarespace: Pages, the gear icon next to the page, the SEO tab, "SEO description".
Shopify: Online Store, Preferences, "Homepage meta description".
A hand-built site: one line inside <head> of each page:

<meta name="description" content="Licensed plumbers in Columbus since 2009. Leaks, water heaters and drain clogs, same-day visits, upfront prices. Call (555) 010-0199.">

While you are there, check the page title too (the blue line). "Home" tells a searcher nothing; "Business name - what you do in your city" does.

How long until Google shows it

The next time Google recrawls the page, usually days to a few weeks. Google uses your description in most results for searches on your name, but it can still show other text from the page when that fits a particular search better, so keep the page's first paragraph clear as well.

The two results above are mock-ups of a fictional business built for this demo, drawn to look like a search result; they are not screenshots of Google. The 43,077-site figure comes from our own scan of small-business home pages in 2026 (a missing <meta name="description"> tag on the home page). More before/after examples: all demos.