Google result preview

Why it's measured in pixels

Google doesn't cut the title at a fixed number of characters, but when it exceeds a pixel width (about 580 px on desktop for the title, about 990 px for the description): a «W» takes far more space than an «i». That's why the tool measures your text with the actual results font.

Indicative limits

The limits change over time and between desktop and mobile, and Google may rewrite your title and description when it sees fit: use the bars as guidance (staying under 90% is prudent), not as a guarantee.

Google rewrites titles, and it happens often

This is the most important thing to know before trimming a title to the pixel: the search engine isn't obliged to use what you wrote. If it judges that some other text on the page describes the content better for the search made, it shows that instead — often the page's main heading, sometimes the site's name, sometimes a piece of an internal heading. It happens on a sizeable share of results, and it isn't a bug to fix: it's the engine trying to be useful for that particular search.

The practical consequence is that it's better to write a title that is already the right one — clear, containing the words people actually search for, and not repeating the site's name four times — rather than chase the preview. A rewritten title is nearly always a sign that the original was vague or full of filler.

The description doesn't lift you, it gets you clicked

The meta description is not a ranking factor: it won't put you higher. It does something else, worth just as much: it convinces people who can already see you to click. The words of the search are shown in bold in the preview, so a description containing the words people really type stands out visually too. If it's missing, the engine composes one by taking a piece of the page, and that nearly always comes out worse than one written on purpose.

Why two titles with the same letters get cut differently

Because the cut is by pixels, not by characters: an «i» takes a little over a third of the width of an «m», so a 60-character title full of narrow letters fits and one full of capitals doesn't. It's why counts in characters get it wrong constantly, and why here the measuring is done by actually drawing the text in the typeface and size Google uses.

Two rules worth more than the count: the important part goes at the beginning, because it's the only part that survives every cut; and the site's name, if you use it, goes at the end after a separator, where it costs little and doesn't steal space from what matters.

Nearby tools

To count words and characters of any text there is Word counter, and for social limits Social character counter. If you're preparing a site, there are also Sitemap.xml generator and Robots.txt generator, and for a page's address Make a URL slug.