The term snippet is synonymous with the search listing and therefore includes the title, URL, Cached link, etc.Not true. Google makes very clear the fact that the term snippet applies solely to the description — and therefore follows the title and precedes the URL and the Cached link.
Google always uses the meta description in the snippet if it’s defined.That is far from the case. As already mentioned, snippets are query-specific and so they are always changing. Even when your meta description includes the search term, there are no guarantees.
Meta descriptions help with rankings — not just the snippet.This is patently untrue. According to Google, “while accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won’t affect your ranking within search results” (from this aforementioned post.)
The bolded keywords in the search listing are bolded because they affected the ranking.Nope. The bolding of keywords (KWIC) is solely for user experience purposes. The meta description, as already stated directly above, does not influence a page’s rankings.
The maximum length of a standard snippet is 160 characters. I’ve seen various SEO bloggers asserting max lengths of 150, 156, 160, 161, and 165. What’s the correct answer? As mentioned above, 156.
Let’s deconstruct the Google snippet in all its glory — from the Posts/Authors/Last Post line, to the document date, to the Keywords in Context (“KWIC”), to the ellipses, to the inside-the-snippet anchor links.
Anatomy Of A Google Snippet
by Stephan Spencer
5 myths about Google snippets
http://searchengineland.com/anatomy-of-a-google-snippet-38357
Let’s deconstruct the Google snippet in all its glory — from the Posts/Authors/Last Post line, to the document date, to the Keywords in Context (“KWIC”), to the ellipses, to the inside-the-snippet anchor links.