Function to Change Custom Excerpt Length

/**
* code #1 - update the post excerpt character length
* @param integer
* @return integer
*/
function my_excerpt_length($length)
{
return 65;
}
add_filter('excerpt_length', 'my_excerpt_length');

This small block of code will allow you to customize the total number of characters allowed in your post snippets. These are the brief descriptions which are produced automatically by WordPress for each blog article. They appear as the page description, and also in queries like the search template.

Just update the number to whatever character limit you would like to impose. My example of 65 is a fair set for brief content – Google usually recommends anywhere from 80-110 words for SEO descriptions.