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SERP preview

See your snippet the way Google renders it - measured in pixels, not characters

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406 / 600px
851 / 920px
Preview · desktop
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Both fit on this device. Check the other one before you ship.

Google truncates on width, not on characters

This is the single most repeated piece of bad advice in on-page SEO. "Keep titles under 60 characters" is an average dressed up as a rule. Google renders desktop titles in Arial at 20px and cuts them at roughly 600 pixels, and characters are not the same width - a title of narrow letters fits far more than one full of capitals and Ms.

This preview measures the thing that actually decides it, using a fixed table of Arial advance widths. That means the answer is deterministic: it is the same on your machine as on ours, which a canvas-based measurement cannot promise because it shifts with whatever fonts happen to be installed.

The budgets

  • Desktop title - about 600px, Arial 20px
  • Desktop description - about 990px, Arial 14px
  • Mobile title - about 490px
  • Mobile description - about 680px

Google will probably rewrite it anyway

Title tags get rewritten on a large share of queries, and descriptions are regenerated from page content whenever Google decides something on the page answers the query better. Neither is a reason to skip writing them - a good title is what Google rewrites from - but it is a reason not to agonise over a single character.

Worth pairing with the headline analyzer, which checks the H1 the reader lands on rather than the title they clicked.

Common questions

Why measure pixels instead of characters?
Because Google truncates on rendered width. "Illinois" and "Wowwww" are both eight characters and nowhere near the same width, so a 60-character title can fit comfortably or get cut depending entirely on which letters it uses. Character limits are an average pretending to be a rule.
What are the actual pixel limits?
Roughly 600px for desktop titles rendered in Arial at 20px, and about 990px for descriptions at 14px. Mobile is narrower - around 490px and 680px. These shift when Google changes its result layout, which it does without announcement, so treat them as close rather than exact.
Will Google show exactly what I wrote?
Often not. Google rewrites title tags on a large share of queries and generates descriptions from page content whenever it thinks something on the page answers the query better than your meta description. What you write is a strong suggestion, not a guarantee.
Does the meta description affect rankings?
No, not directly - it has not been a ranking factor for many years. It affects click-through rate, which affects how much traffic a given ranking actually produces. That is worth the ten minutes.
Why does this render in Arial?
Because Google renders desktop results in Arial, so Arial metrics are the right model. The widths come from a fixed advance-width table rather than a canvas measurement, so the answer is identical on every machine instead of shifting with whatever fonts you have installed.