SERP Preview

See exactly how your title and description truncate on desktop and mobile, measured in pixels, which is how truncation actually works, rather than by counting characters like most tools.

How to use it

  1. Type or paste your title, description and URL. The preview renders in the same typeface and size a results page uses, and measures the actual rendered width.
  2. Switch between desktop and mobile. They truncate at different widths, and mobile is usually where a title you were happy with stops making sense.
  3. Enter the query the page targets. It highlights matching words the way a results page bolds them, which is a large part of why one snippet gets clicked over another.

What the numbers mean

Why pixels, not characters
Truncation happens at a pixel width, not a character count. A title of 60 narrow characters can fit where 55 wide ones do not. Every tool that counts characters is approximating something it could simply measure.
The front-loading rule
Whatever is most likely to be truncated should be the least important thing you wrote. Put the job in the first few words and the brand at the end, a truncated brand name still gets recognised, a truncated job does not.
Objection handling in the description
The description is not a summary, it is the place to remove the reasons someone will not click. In the reference dataset the phrases that mattered were the ones resolving doubt (no sign-up, no upload, no watermark) rather than the ones describing features.

Questions

Does Google always use the description I write?

No. It rewrites descriptions often, particularly when the query does not match what you wrote. Writing a good one still matters, because it is what gets used when it does match, and because writing it forces you to decide what the page is for.

How long should a title be?

Short enough to survive mobile truncation, which is roughly 580 pixels rather than a fixed character count. Use the preview instead of a rule of thumb. That is the entire point of it.

Should I put my brand name in every title?

At the end, yes, once the page has earned some brand recognition. In the reference dataset brand queries were 42.3% of all clicks, so the name is doing real work, but never at the cost of the first few words, which are what get read.

Guides that use this tool

Other free tools