SERP snippet preview
Write a title and description, and see where Google would cut them — measured in pixels, the way Google actually truncates, not in characters.
Runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded, and it is free with no account.
Desktop
Mobile
An approximation of the layout, not a rendering of Google's page. The cut-off points are measured, the styling is illustrative.
What you control, and what you don't
Both fields are suggestions. Google rewrites displayed titles for a large share of results — most often when the title is stuffed with keywords, identical across a whole site, or a poor answer to the query someone actually typed. It replaces meta descriptions even more freely, pulling a passage from the page when that passage matches the query better. Writing a good one still pays; expecting it to be used verbatim every time does not.
Where the length actually bites is the front of the string. A truncated title is not a disaster, but a title whose distinguishing words fall after the cut is a wasted result — the part that survives is the part that has to earn the click. Front-load it and treat the boundary here as somewhere to stay comfortably inside rather than a line to hit exactly.
And none of it matters for a page that is not in the index at all. If a result you are writing snippets for has never appeared, the question is upstream — why is my page not indexed by Google walks the six mechanical causes in order.
Questions
- Why measure pixels instead of counting characters?
- Because Google truncates on rendered width, not character count. A 60-character title of narrow letters fits comfortably while a 55-character title in capitals does not, so a character counter tells you the wrong thing in both directions. This measures the text as the browser draws it.
- Will Google use the title I write?
- Often, but not always. Google rewrites the displayed title for a substantial share of results, usually when it judges your title to be keyword-stuffed, boilerplate across many pages, or a poor match for the query. Your title tag is a strong preference, not an instruction.
- Does the meta description affect ranking?
- No, not directly — Google has said so repeatedly. It affects whether someone clicks the result you already earned, which is the reason to write it well. Google also replaces it with text pulled from the page whenever it thinks that text answers the query better.
- Are the pixel limits exact?
- No, and treat anything that claims they are with suspicion. Google publishes no limit, and the real cut-off shifts with the device, the font, and the layout of the results page. The figures here are close to current desktop and mobile results and are useful as a boundary to stay inside, not a specification.
Checking whether those URLs are actually in Google?
That is the part a browser cannot do for you. indexaction runs up to 1,000 URLs in one
check and returns a verdict for each — no site: searches, no CAPTCHA. New
accounts get 50 free credits.
Other free tools
- robots.txt tester — Paste a robots.txt and a URL, see which line decides it and why.
- Sitemap URL extractor — Turn a sitemap into a plain list of URLs you can paste anywhere.
- Bulk URL cleaner — Deduplicate and normalise a messy list of links before you check it.