Page summary (intro text)

A page summary, also called intro text, tells the user what the page is about and helps them to decide if it’s relevant to them, from search results as well as from the page itself.

For example:

• page title: Council tax charges and bands
• summary: Find out which council tax band your property is in and how much you have to pay.

Summary text must:

• be clear, active and descriptive (our design principles)
• contain the words that users use, so it comes up in search results
• use sentence case
• be frontloaded
• be one or 2 sentences long and less than 160 characters (including spaces), as this is what most search engines display
• answer the users' question: if you have a simple answer to a question, put it in the summary, so that users don’t have to leave the search results to get their information
• end with a full stop, this can help people who use assistive technology like screen readers

Summary text must not:

• contain any unnecessary words, such as 'This page is about'
• contain acronyms or abbreviations, unless they're well known, such as 'EU'
• repeat the page title in the summary
• contain questions