Check the length of your title and meta description

How to use the tool

There are two ways to start. The first: paste the URL of a live page and click “Fetch”. The tool reads its title tag and meta description, fills in the fields and warns you if the page has no description or carries a noindex directive, which keeps it out of Google. The second: type or paste your text directly, for example to test a new version before publishing it.

Each field shows its character count, its width in pixels and a verdict: too short, good length or too long. The previews update as you type. For mobile, pick a screen width: a title that fits on two lines at 360 px will also fit on every wider screen, which is why it is the default.

How many characters for a title and a meta description?

Google sets no maximum length for either. The title element has no limit and the displayed title is truncated as needed, typically to fit the device width.¹ The documentation on meta descriptions says the same about the snippet.²

The tool’s reference points therefore come from the SEO software makers who have studied the question. For the title, Moz states that Google displays titles over 600 pixels at most and sees the fewest rewrites between 51 and 60 characters.³ For the meta description, the Yoast SEO plugin flags it as too short under 120 characters and too long beyond 156,⁴ and Moz recommends 120 to 160 characters.⁵

The tool therefore expects a title of at least 51 characters and at most 600 pixels, and a meta description of 120 to 160 characters. These thresholds match what the results show: on google.fr, on October 16, 2026, a 599-pixel title was shown in full and a 602-pixel title was cut, while snippets stopped between 156 and 166 characters.

Why measure in pixels rather than characters

Google cuts a title according to the space it takes on screen, and every letter has its own width. In the font of Google’s titles, an “m” is more than four times as wide as an “i”. Two titles of the same length can therefore end one before the limit and the other beyond it: “Emergency plumber in Leeds, fast call-outs, free quotes” has 55 characters and measures 549 pixels; written in capitals, the same title measures 656 and gets cut.

The tool computes each width with the fonts Google uses in its results: Google Sans at 22 pixels for the title, Arial at 14 pixels for the snippet on desktop, Roboto at 14 pixels on mobile. The character count stays visible, since the meta description thresholds are based on it.

Desktop and mobile do not show the same thing

On desktop, the results column is 652 pixels wide. The title fits on a single line and ends with an ellipsis beyond roughly 600 pixels; the snippet takes up two lines at most.

On mobile, the title can run over two lines and the snippet over three. The available width depends on the phone: Google leaves a 16-pixel margin on each side, so a 360-pixel screen offers 328 pixels of text and a 430-pixel screen offers 398. The same title can fit on two lines on a large screen and need three on a small one. That is why the tool lets you choose the width.

The URL appears above the title, split into sections separated by chevrons. Its words are read before the title itself, which raises the question of keywords in the URL.

When Google rewrites your title

Google does not always keep the title tag as written. In August 2021, right after a change to its system, a Moz study of 57,832 titles found 58% of them modified.⁶ Google adjusted its system the following month and has since stated that it uses the title element in 87% of cases, up from about 80% before.⁷

In the other cases, Google builds the title from the page’s main visible heading, its other headings, other prominent text or the text of links pointing to it. It replaces in particular a half-empty title (“| Site Name”), an outdated year, a title that does not reflect the content, the same text repeated across dozens of pages, an unclear main heading, a title written in a different language from the page, or the site name repeated twice.¹

When Google does not show your meta description

The snippet comes primarily from the page content. Google uses the meta description when it describes the page more accurately than the text itself, and the snippet can change from one query to another.² A missing, generic or keyword-stuffed description is therefore unlikely to appear.

The meta description is not used for ranking: Google said so as early as 2009.⁸ Its job is to make people want to click by summing up what the page offers. For more control over the snippet, Google offers the max-snippet tag, which sets its maximum length, the nosnippet tag, which removes it, and the data-nosnippet attribute, which excludes part of the page.²

Writing a good title

Google’s recommendations come down to a few rules,¹ and the tool only checks the length: the rest is up to you.

• One title per page, distinct from the others. If every product page in a shop reads “Cheap products for sale”, nothing tells them apart in the results.
• An accurate description of the page, with no vague label such as “Home” or “Profile”.
• No keyword stuffing: repeating variants of the same term does not help the searcher and can look like spam.
• The brand at the end, separated from the rest by a hyphen, a pipe or a colon. The homepage can carry a fuller description of the site.
• Important words first: when the title is too long, its end is what disappears, on desktop and on mobile alike.
• A clear main heading on the page, as the first H1, consistent with the title, since it is the first source Google uses as a replacement.

Writing a good meta description

• A description unique to each page. The same sentence copied across the whole site says nothing about each page.
• Not necessarily a sentence. Google gives the example of a book: author, illustrator, price and page count gathered in the description. For an article, the author and the date; for a product, the price and the manufacturer.²
• On a large catalogue, a description generated from each page’s data rather than one shared sentence.
• The words people search for: Google shows in bold, in the snippet, the terms that match the query.²

Once the tags are in place, this check is one of the first items in a page-by-page review of a website.

Frequently asked questions