Right-click anywhere on the page and select 'View Page Source' (or press Ctrl+U on Windows, Cmd+Option+U on Mac). Once the HTML opens, press Ctrl+F or Cmd+F and search for "meta name=\"description\"". The content attribute holds the meta description text. This works on any browser and any site. Browser extensions make it faster. SEOquake, MozBar, and SEO Meta in 1 Click overlay SEO data directly on the page, showing the meta description, title tag, and character counts in one click. We use SEOquake at Ottawa SEO because it batches checks across multiple pages and exports to CSV when auditing client sites or competitor clusters. Google Search Console shows which meta descriptions Google actually displays versus what you wrote. Navigate to Performance > Search Results, filter by page, then compare impressions to your source code. Google rewrites roughly 60–70% of meta descriptions when it thinks it can better match the query, so what you wrote isn't always what users see. For bulk checks across dozens of pages, Screaming Frog SEO Spider crawls your entire site and exports every meta description, flagging duplicates, missing tags, or descriptions over 160 characters. The free version handles up to 500 URLs. We run this monthly on portfolio sites to catch meta tags that slip through after content updates or CMS migrations. Google's SERP preview itself is the fastest manual check. Search "site:example.com keyword" and look below each blue title link. If you see ellipses or a description that doesn't match your intended copy, either you didn't set one or Google overrode it. Character limits hover around 155–160 characters on desktop, slightly less on mobile, but Google measures by pixel width, not strict character count. Aim for 150–155 to avoid truncation on most devices.