Google SERP Preview Tool
See exactly how your title and meta description will look in Google — on desktop and mobile — before you publish. Get instant warnings when they're too long to fully display.
Title length looks good — it should display in full.
Your description may be cut off. Aim for ~150–160 characters with a clear call to action.
How Google decides what to show in the SERP
A search result is not a direct rendering of your title tag and meta description. Google treats both as strong suggestions and rewrites them when it judges something else would serve the query better — which, by its own published figures, happens for a substantial share of results.
That does not make the tags unimportant. It makes them the strongest single input into something you do not fully control, which is a good reason to write them deliberately and check how they truncate.
What each input means
- Title tag
- Displayed as the clickable headline. Google truncates on pixel width rather than character count, which is why capital letters and wide characters shorten the visible title. Around 600 pixels, or roughly 60 characters, is the practical limit on desktop.
- Meta description
- The grey text beneath. It is not a ranking factor, but it heavily influences click-through rate. Around 155–160 characters survives on desktop; mobile shows less.
- URL / breadcrumb
- Google usually displays a breadcrumb trail rather than the raw URL. Clean, readable paths help; long parameter strings look untrustworthy.
- Favicon
- Shown beside the result on mobile. A missing or generic favicon costs a small amount of visual credibility in a crowded result page.
What gets truncated where
These are practical working limits, not guarantees. Google measures pixels, so an all-caps title of 55 characters may truncate while a lowercase one of 62 survives.
| Desktop title | ~600px / ~60 chars | Front-load the keyword; anything after the cut is invisible. |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile title | ~920px / ~68 chars | Wider than desktop in characters because the font is smaller. |
| Desktop description | ~155 – 160 chars | The last sentence is the one most often lost. |
| Mobile description | ~120 chars | Put the important claim first, always. |
Common mistakes
Writing to the character limit instead of the message
A title padded to exactly 60 characters with keyword repetition performs worse than a clear 45-character one. The limit is a ceiling, not a target.
Duplicating the title inside the description
It wastes the description entirely. Use it to say something the title does not — a differentiator, a price, a guarantee.
Assuming your description will be used
Google rewrites descriptions frequently, often pulling a sentence from the page. Make sure the on-page copy near the top is worth quoting.
Ignoring how the brand suffix eats space
Appending your brand to every title costs 15–20 characters of visible headline. On long titles it should be dropped rather than truncating the message.
The most valuable use of a SERP preview is comparative: paste in the two results currently ranking above you alongside your own. Truncation problems and weak differentiation become obvious immediately when the three are side by side, in a way they never are when you are editing a title tag in isolation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about this free tool.
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