SERP Preview Tool: See Your Title and Description in Google

How to use the SERP Preview Tool: See Your Title and Description in Google

1. Type or paste your title and descriptionEnter the title tag and the meta description of the page, and its web address. You can also add the words people might search for, and they will be shown in bold as Google does.
2. Read the two previewsA desktop preview and a phone preview show the text as it is likely to appear. If something would be cut off, the preview ends in an ellipsis, and the notes below it quote the part that is lost.
3. Check the metersEach meter shows how wide the title and the description are, with a marker for the phone limit. Green fits everywhere, amber fits on desktop but not on a phone, and red is cut off on both.
4. Fix what the checks flagThe checks cover length, filler words, repeated keywords, old years, shouting in capitals, and a title that disagrees with the page heading. These are the cases where Google is known to rewrite the text it shows.
5. Check many pages, then copy the resultSwitch to the batch tab and paste rows or open a crawler export to check a whole site section and find repeated titles. When a page is done, copy the title and description as HTML tags.

Why pixels matter more than characters

Google shortens a title or a description when it does not fit the space it has. Google's own documentation says that the title link is truncated as needed, typically to fit the device width, and that there is no limit on how long a meta description can be, but the snippet is truncated to fit the device width. Both statements are about width, which depends on the letters used.

In Arial, a lowercase i is about a fifth as wide as a capital W. A title written in capitals can lose its last words at 48 characters, while a title of narrow letters can run past 70 and still fit. That is why a character counter that says 60 is the limit will tell you your title is fine when it is not, and tell you to cut a title that would have fitted.

The limits are observed, not official

Google does not publish a pixel limit for titles or descriptions. The figures in circulation, about 600 pixels for a desktop title and about 920 pixels for a desktop description, come from people measuring results and not from Google. They are good guides, and they are what this tool starts with. For phones the commonly quoted figures are lower, around 500 pixels for a title and 680 for a description, and they vary by screen width.

Because they are observations, they can be wrong for your results or change over time. The tool lets you change all four limits, and it says in the preview that they are typical. If your own searches show your results cut at a different place, enter your own numbers and the whole page follows them.

How the width is measured

Google sets titles in about 20 pixel Arial and descriptions in about 14 pixel Arial, as reported by the people who measure them. This tool measures with a built-in table of Arial letter widths, rather than asking your browser to measure with whatever font it has. That keeps the number the same on a Windows PC, a Mac, and a phone, which would otherwise give different results if one lacked Arial.

The table was checked against the real Arial font, letter by letter. Whole-sentence measurements land within about half a percent of the font's own figures, and the small difference is kerning, the fine spacing between particular letter pairs. Characters that Arial does not contain, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and emoji, have an estimated width, and the page says so when that applies.

• Titles are measured at 20 pixels and descriptions at 14 pixels, in Arial.
• Text is cut at the last whole word that fits, and the ellipsis is counted in the width.
• A date typed in the options takes up room before the description, as Google sometimes shows one.

When Google rewrites your title

Fitting the limit does not guarantee that your title is shown. Google generates title links from several sources, including the title element, headings, other prominent text on the page, and links to the page, and it says it may change the title when the one you wrote does not describe the page well. Its documentation names the cases: a title that is half empty, a title that is obsolete, boilerplate text shared by many pages, and a page with no clear main title.

The checks here follow that list. A very short or generic title, such as Home or Untitled, looks half empty. A title that carries an old year looks obsolete. The same title on many pages is boilerplate, which the batch tab finds. A title that shares few words with the page heading may be replaced by the heading. The tool cannot know what Google will do, but it can tell you when your text matches a case that Google says it rewrites.

• Half-empty or generic titles, such as a lone brand name or the word Home.
• Titles with a year that is no longer current.
• Identical titles or descriptions on many pages.
• A title that differs a lot from the main heading of the page.
• Titles in all capitals or that repeat a keyword three or more times.

Descriptions: what Google does with them

Google's documentation says that snippets are primarily created from the page content itself, and that it may use the meta description when that gives users a more accurate description of the page than the page's own text. In practice, this means a good description is used some of the time, and a poor one is replaced often. A description that opens with filler such as Welcome to or Click here, repeats the title, or is just a list of keywords is a likely candidate for replacement.

For a page that answers many different searches, leaving the description out can be the right choice, because Google can then pick the passage that fits each search. For a page with one clear purpose, a short description that says what the reader will get is worth writing, and the preview shows how much of it will be seen.

Checking many pages at once

The batch tab reads one page per line as URL, title, and description, separated by commas or tabs, with quoted values allowed. It also reads a crawler export directly, finding the columns by their names, such as Address, Title 1, and Meta Description 1. You can paste the text or open a CSV file, and up to 500 pages are checked.

The results list each page with its widths and any problems, and a summary counts how many titles and descriptions would be cut off and how many are repeated. Repeated titles and descriptions are compared without regard to case or spacing. You can show only the pages that need attention, open any page in the single preview, and download the whole result as a CSV file.

What this tool cannot show

The preview is a model, not a screenshot of Google. It cannot see your page, so it does not know which text Google would use instead, and it does not show rich results, images, sitelinks, or the site name Google chooses. Google generates the site name from your home page and structured data, and the name shown here is taken from the address, or from the box in the options.

Use the preview to avoid mistakes that you can control: text that is cut off, text that is too thin, and text that matches a rewrite case. Then check the real results in Google Search after the page has been crawled, and do not treat any preview, including this one, as a promise of what will be shown.

Limits and accuracy

• Google publishes no pixel limits. The defaults of 600 and 920 pixels on desktop and 500 and 680 on a phone are commonly observed figures. They can be wrong for your results and can change, so they can be edited.
• The measurement uses Arial at 20 pixels for titles and 14 pixels for descriptions. If Google sets text in another font or size for your result, widths will differ somewhat.
• The preview does not know what is on your page, so it cannot tell what Google would use in place of text it rewrites. The warnings are based on cases that Google's documentation lists.
• Bold text in a real result is slightly wider than regular text. The preview shows bold search words but measures all text as regular.
• Characters outside Arial, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and emoji, have an estimated width.
• Rich results, images, sitelinks, and the site name that Google selects are not shown.
• The batch tab checks up to 500 rows, and a file can be up to 5 MB.

Frequently asked questions