Title and meta description length
See how your title and meta description will look in search before you publish them.
Calculator inputs
Results
Enter your values and press “Calculate” to see the result.
In short
- What it calculates
- See how your title and meta description will look in search before you publish them.
- Formula used
Width available for the title: 580 pixels (Arial 20)- Example
- A 55-character title with many wide letters can exceed 580 pixels and be truncated, while a 60-character one made of narrow letters fits comfortably.
Title and meta description length checker
Type the title and the description and you will see, below, how they are going to appear in the results list, cut exactly where the search engine would cut them.
Search engines truncate by width, not by letter count: a title full of wide letters is cut sooner than one with the same number of narrow ones. That is why this measures pixels as well as characters.
Enter your keyword and it also checks whether it appears, and whether it appears early.
How it works
Every letter adds the width it occupies in Arial, the typeface search results are drawn in. That sum tells you whether the text fits the 580 pixels of the title or the 920 of the description, and where the cut would fall.
The cut happens at the last whole word that fits, never mid-word, which is what the search engine does.
Formula
Width available for the title: 580 pixels (Arial 20)
Width available for the description: 920 pixels (Arial 14, two lines)
As a rough guide in letters: title 30 to 60 characters, description 120 to 158
Worked example
A 55-character title with many wide letters can exceed 580 pixels and be truncated, while a 60-character one made of narrow letters fits comfortably.
Explanation
The meta description is not a ranking factor
Google has said for years that it does not use it to decide the order of results. What it does affect is whether someone clicks, and that is its real value: it will not lift you up the list, but it can double clicks from the same position.
Google rewrites it often
For a significant share of searches, the engine ignores your meta description and composes a snippet from the page content, picking the passage that best answers that particular query. Writing it well still pays, but it helps to know it will not always be shown.
The limit is pixels, not characters
Truncation depends on rendered width, so a phrase full of m characters takes more space than one full of i characters with the same letter count. The usual 155 to 160 character ranges are practical approximations of a limit actually measured in pixels, and it differs between mobile and desktop.
Put what matters first
If the engine truncates, the end disappears. Placing your value proposition in the first eighty characters guarantees it survives the cut on any device.
Frequently asked questions
Does the meta description affect rankings?
Not directly, but it affects click-through rate from the results, and that behaviour does have an effect.
What happens if I go over the length?
The engine cuts the text with an ellipsis or rewrites the snippet itself, and you lose control of the message.
Does the meta description improve my ranking?
It is not a ranking factor. It influences click-through rate from results, which is a different and also valuable effect.
Why does Google show different text?
Because it generates snippets from the content when it judges they answer the specific query better.
Need to calculate something else?
These tools are often used alongside this calculator.
Character count
Characters with and without spaces, lines and bytes in a text.
Slug generator
Turn a title into a clean URL with no accents or odd characters.
Keyword density
How often your keyword appears and how much weight it carries.
Word count
Words, characters, sentences and paragraphs in any text.