Google Meta Counter

Characters versus pixels

Every article about title length quotes a character count, and every one of those counts is a rough proxy. Google truncates by pixel width, not by letter count. A title of sixty narrow letters may survive intact while a title of fifty wide capitals gets cut.

This tool estimates pixel width from character shapes and shows you the result next to the count. The desktop limit sits near 580 pixels for titles and 920 pixels for descriptions. Treat crossing those lines as a warning, not a cliff.

Where the crop lands

Google cuts titles at a word boundary near the limit and appends an ellipsis. Descriptions are cut at a sentence boundary if one is close enough, otherwise mid phrase. The practical consequence is that the first forty characters of a title carry almost all the weight, both for the reader and for a search engine deciding whether the page matches a query.

Writing a title that survives

• Lead with the phrase people actually search, not your brand
• Put the brand at the end, where truncation is harmless
• Avoid filler openers such as Welcome to or Everything you need to know about
• Keep one number or clear benefit near the start if the page supports it

Descriptions are not a ranking factor, but they win clicks

A meta description does not lift a page in the rankings. It does decide whether a person clicks the result. Roughly 150 to 160 characters on desktop, closer to 120 on mobile. Front load the specific promise and skip the sales language, since Google frequently rewrites descriptions it finds too promotional.

A description that answers what the page does in one plain sentence beats a clever one that gets rewritten.