SERP Snippet Preview

See how a title and meta description are likely to appear in Google on desktop and mobile, measured in pixels rather than characters.

Enable JavaScript to preview your own snippet; the examples below use the defaults.

Google measures pixels, not characters, so capitals and wide letters cost more.

Google shows a breadcrumb built from the path, not the raw URL.

Desktop 580px title budget

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Mobile 500px title budget

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See roughly how a title and meta description will appear in Google, on desktop and on mobile, measured the way Google measures: in pixels.

How to use

  1. Paste the real title and description, not a summary of them. The point is to see where they get cut.
  2. Watch the desktop and mobile previews together. Mobile has a tighter title budget and a longer description one, so a title that fits on a laptop can be cut on a phone.
  3. Put the useful part first. Whatever is beyond the cut still counts for relevance, but nobody reads it.
  4. Check the breadcrumb. Google builds it from the URL path, so a long slug full of stop words shows up here as clutter.
  5. Treat the result as an estimate. Google rewrites titles and descriptions often, and no preview tool can predict that.

Example

The same title, both layouts:

Desktop (580px): How to migrate a WordPress site without downtime, step by …
Mobile  (500px): How to migrate a WordPress site without …

Nothing changed but the budget. This is why character counts mislead: “WWW” and “iii” are the same three characters and nowhere near the same width.

Pitfalls

  • Character counts are a poor proxy. Capitals, W, M and @ are wide; i, l and punctuation are narrow. Two 60 character titles can differ by 80 pixels.
  • Google rewrites the displayed title for a majority of results, pulling from the h1 or the link text. Your tag is a strong suggestion, not a guarantee.
  • The description is rewritten even more often, usually to a passage matching the query. It is worth writing well anyway: that is what is shown when nothing better matches.
  • Pixel budgets are not published and move. The figures here match what Google has used consistently, but they are observed, not documented.
  • The preview ignores what a real result may add: sitelinks, dates, ratings, favicons and an ad label all change the space.
  • A date prefix in the description eats budget on mobile, where the layout is narrowest.
  • The breadcrumb comes from the URL structure, so a flat site shows just the host and a deep one shows several levels.
  • Emoji usually do not survive into the title, and when they do they are wider than they look here.

Compatibility

The measurement approximates Arial at the sizes Google renders at: 20px desktop titles, 18px mobile, 14px descriptions. It is deliberately conservative near the limit. The tool runs entirely in your browser: nothing you type is sent anywhere, which matters when the page you are working on is not live yet.

Frequently asked questions

How long should a title be?
Under about 580 pixels on desktop, which is roughly 55 to 60 average characters. Aim a little short rather than exactly at the line.
Why does Google show a different title from mine?
It rewrites titles when it thinks another one matches the page or the query better, often the h1. A clear, non-keyword-stuffed title is rewritten less.
Do meta descriptions affect ranking?
No. They affect whether the result is clicked, which is worth more than most things that do affect ranking.
Is the pixel figure exact?
No. Fonts differ per device and Google does not publish the budgets. This gets you close enough to decide whether to shorten.
Why is my URL shown as a breadcrumb?
Google has shown breadcrumbs instead of raw URLs since 2019, built from the path or from breadcrumb structured data.
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