SERP simulator: check your title tag and meta description length
Type a title and a meta description, or paste a page address to pull them in. The tool measures their width in pixels, shows where Google truncates them and updates the search result preview as you type. Everything runs in your browser, no sign-up.
Google preview, desktop
The simulator checks one page at a time. For the whole site, the SEO Cartograph crawler flags missing, duplicate and overlong titles and meta descriptions, up to 500 URLs with a free account.
What the simulator measures
The two tags that make up your Google result, as a searcher sees them.
Width in pixels
Letters vary in width: in Arial, a W takes up about four times the space of an i. The counter measures the title and description in the font Google uses on desktop and tells you whether the text fits.
The result preview
Site name, URL breadcrumb, title and description, truncated at the same point as in Google and ending with an ellipsis. You rewrite while watching the result.
Reading a live page
Paste an address: the tool pulls the title, meta description and site name declared in the page code, then fills in the fields. A page that is not live yet can be tested by typing the text by hand.
The limits, stated before you start
Google publishes no length limit. The 580 pixel threshold for titles and 990 pixels for descriptions are benchmarks observed on desktop results. The measurement uses your browser’s Arial font and can be a few pixels off on a device that lacks it. Google sometimes rewrites titles and often builds the snippet from the page text: the preview shows what your tags allow, while the actual result also depends on the query. Reading an address covers the HTML returned by the server, without running JavaScript, and is limited to twenty reads per hour per connection. Typing by hand is unlimited and never leaves your browser.
Title tag and meta description: what Google does with them
Two short tags that decide what a searcher reads before choosing which result to click.
The title counts for ranking and for clicks
The title is one of the signals that tell Google what the page is about, and it supplies the clickable line of the result. Put the topic first, in the words a searcher would use, keep the brand name for the end, and give every page a title of its own.
The meta description drives clicks
Google has said it plays no part in ranking. Its job is to persuade: a description that sums up the page and answers the search intent gives people a reason to pick your result over the next one.
Google truncates at screen width
There is no character limit. Titles and descriptions are cut when they exceed the available width, hence pixel benchmarks: around 580 for the title on desktop and around 990 for the description. In characters, common benchmarks are 50 to 60 for the title and 150 to 160 for the description, depending on the letters used.
Google can rewrite both
Since 2021, Google sometimes builds the title link from the H1, other headings or link anchors, especially when the title is empty, too long, identical across pages or stuffed with repeated keywords. The snippet follows the query: Google borrows page text when it answers the search better than the meta description.
Rewriting a title and description, step by step
Start from the live page
Paste its address to load the current title and description. For a page in progress, type your text directly.
Put the topic in the first words
The start of the title stays visible when Google truncates. Place the page topic there in a searcher’s words, and the brand at the end, after a dash or a pipe.
Aim for “Shown in full”
Rewrite until both counters turn green. A slightly short description is fine. A truncated one loses its ending, often the sentence that invited the click.
Publish, then check the whole site
Read the page again with the tool once it is live, to make sure your theme or SEO plugin adds nothing to the title. Across a site, duplicates and missing tags show up in a crawl.
Beyond a single page
The page in front of you
The same pixel measurement on the page open in your browser, including staging sites and pages behind a login.
- Title and meta description measured in pixels
- Headings, tags and links of the rendered page
- JSON-LD structured data
- Everything stays in the browser
A whole site
An overlong title gets fixed page by page. A title duplicated across a hundred pages comes from the template, and only shows up when you crawl the whole site.
- Missing or duplicate titles and meta descriptions
- Overlong tags
- Badly nested H1 and H2
- Broken links and redirects
In the same series: the llms.txt generator and the JSON-LD structured data generator. To check the links on a page, the broken link checker; to see a page after JavaScript, the Googlebot simulator. All tools are listed on the free SEO tools page.