SERP Snippet Preview

Google doesn't cut titles off at a fixed number of characters. It cuts them when they run out of space. On desktop, titles are set in 20 px Arial and get roughly 600 px. Descriptions are set in 14 px Arial and get about two lines, around 920 px in total.

That's why “60 characters” is only a rule of thumb. Wide letters such as W and M take up more than twice the space of i, l, or 1, so a title in capitals can be cut off at 45 characters, while a lowercase one can fit 70. This tool measures your text in the same font and size, then shows the cut-off with “…”.

The limits are approximate. Google adjusts the layout from time to time, and mobile results can wrap onto more lines, so leave yourself a small margin rather than filling every pixel.

Even a perfect snippet isn't guaranteed. Google rewrites titles it thinks are unhelpful (stuffed with keywords, too long, or the same on many pages) and often picks a different description when page text matches the search better.

You get your own text shown more often when the title matches the page's main heading, says what the page offers in plain words, and is different from every other page on your site. Write the description as an answer to the search, not as a list of keywords.

To see which titles actually get clicked, compare impressions and click-through rate in Search Console. PulsePanda's search reports put that data next to what visitors do once they arrive.