Meta Title and Description Length Checker
Type a page title and meta description to see their length in characters and in pixels, and a live preview of how they might look in search results on desktop and mobile.
Search result preview
Your page title
Your meta description appears here.
An estimate. Search engines cut by pixel width and change their layout over time, and they sometimes rewrite titles and descriptions altogether.
Runs in your browser. Your text is never uploaded.
How the length checker works
Search results cut titles and descriptions by how much room they take up on screen, not by how many characters they have. So the checker measures both. Your browser draws the text in Arial, the font search results use, at 20 pixels for titles and 14 pixels for descriptions, and reports the width.
That width is compared with the approximate space a result has: about 580 pixels for a title, about 920 pixels for a description on desktop (some measurements put it nearer 1,000, so 920 is the cautious end) and about 750 on mobile. When the text is too wide, the preview cuts it at the last whole word that fits and adds an ellipsis, the way a real result does.
The limits are guidance, not rules
Google does not publish a character or pixel limit for either. Its own documentation says titles and snippets are truncated “as needed, typically to fit the device width”. The figures here come from independent measurements of real results, and those measurements disagree a little: one well-known study puts the desktop description limit nearer 1,000 pixels. We use the more cautious figure, so a green bar here should be safe.
Layouts change, too. Treat a result just under the limit as borderline, and keep the most important words at the start, where a cut will never reach them.
Examples
Why pixels matter more than characters, measured in Arial at title size (20px):
| Title | Characters | Width | Fits in ~580px? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60 lowercase “i”s | 60 | about 266px | Easily |
| 30 capital “W”s | 30 | about 566px | Only just |
| 35 lowercase “m”s | 35 | about 583px | No, cut off |
Real titles mix wide and narrow letters, which is why “50 to 60 characters” works as a rule of thumb. Titles in capitals, or heavy with m, w and capital letters, run out of room sooner.
A good title and description for a recipe page:
- Title: Easy Banana Bread Recipe: One Bowl, 10 Minutes
- Description: A moist banana bread made in one bowl with pantry ingredients, ready for the oven in 10 minutes.
Both lead with what the searcher typed, say what makes the page worth clicking, and leave room to spare, even on mobile. Paste them into the checker to see.
Writing titles and descriptions that get clicks
- Put the main search term near the start of the title.
- Give every page its own title and description. Duplicates make results look alike.
- Write the description as a promise: what the reader will find, in plain words.
- Skip filler such as “Welcome to our website”. Every pixel counts.
- Keep your brand name short and at the end, where losing it to a cut matters least.