SERP Preview Tool

Wondering whether your title and description will get cut off in search?

Writing metadata in a CMS field gives you no sense of how it reads as a search listing. This preview puts your words into a result-style card while you type and keeps a running character count for both the title and the description, colored to show when you are inside or beyond the usual target range. Nothing is fetched or stored: the page only mirrors the text in its three boxes.

Step by step

1. Put your draft title in the first box. Watch the count beneath it: gray means under 50, green means 50 to 60, red means over 60.
2. Add the page address in the second box so the green line of the card looks realistic.
3. Write the description in the third box. Its count is gray under 150, green from 150 to 160 and red over 160.
4. Check the card. Text past 60 characters in the title or 160 in the description is replaced by an ellipsis, which shows you which words a reader might never see.
5. Try two or three versions and keep the one that still makes sense when shortened.

What to watch for

Google does not truncate by counting characters. It trims by display width, which varies with the letters used and the screen, so the cut-off in this card is an approximation. Put the words that matter most (the topic, then the brand) at the start, and the exact limit becomes less important. The card also leaves out elements that real listings include, such as the site name, favicon, date and any rich result features, so the vertical space your listing takes up will differ.

Questions people ask

Is there an official character limit for titles?

No. Google publishes no fixed number. Its guidance asks for titles that are descriptive and concise, and it shortens long ones to fit. The 60-character figure is an industry rule of thumb.

Why does Google show a different title from the one I wrote?

Google may generate its own title link when yours is missing, obsolete, inaccurate, stuffed with keywords or repeated across many pages. Fixing those problems gives your own title the best chance of being used.

Does the meta description affect rankings?

Google has said it does not use the meta description as a ranking signal. It can still appear as the snippet, so it affects whether people choose your result. Google often writes its own snippet from the page when that fits the search better.

Further reading: Title Tag Length Too Long and Meta Description Length Too Long: How to Fix It.

The same tool is also published on the static mirror at seoprocheck.github.io, and the rest of the set is on the free tools page.