Meta title and description length checker

How the checker works

Most length guides count characters. Google doesn’t. It clips a desktop title once the rendered text runs past roughly 580 pixels, and letters vary wildly in width. A capital W takes up more than four times the room of a lowercase i, so thirty capital Ws almost fill a title while sixty lowercase i’s use under half of it. A character counter can give you the tick and Google can still chop the last word.

So this tool draws your text in Arial at the size Google uses, 20 pixels for titles and 14 for descriptions, and measures the actual width. The previews then show the same result on a desktop monitor, a tablet and a phone. Phones wrap the title over two lines and show less of the description, which is why the important words belong at the front.

Length is only half the job. Add the search term you want the page to rank for and the checker scores how well the snippet is aimed at it: whether the keyword is in the title and near the start, whether it survives the cut-off, whether it appears in the description and the URL, and whether it has been stuffed in twice. Google bolds words that match the search, so a well-targeted description visibly answers the question before anyone clicks.

A pattern that turns up constantly on small business sites: say a Midland plumber’s homepage is titled “Home | Smith Plumbing Pty Ltd”. It passes every length test and fails every targeting one, because nobody in the Perth Hills searches for “home”. Rewrite it as “Emergency Plumber Midland & Perth Hills | Smith Plumbing” and the service leads, the suburbs match how locals actually search, and it still fits at 529 pixels.

One honest caveat. Google rewrites plenty of titles and descriptions, usually when the one you wrote is vague or does not match the query. You cannot stop it, but a specific, accurate snippet with the keyword up front gives it far less reason to.

The questions we get asked most when we walk clients through their search snippets. Want a second opinion on yours? Call 1800 967 911 and talk it through with someone in our Wanneroo office.