Title Tags and Meta Descriptions: Length, Pixels, Clicks

On 7 October our own SEO analysis flagged the title of this site’s homepage. It read “Free AdSense Eligibility Checker Tool: Test Your Site Before You Apply”, which is 70 characters and about 635 px wide in Arial at 20 px, the setup our snippet preview uses. A desktop title line fits roughly 600 px in that preview, and the cut landed after “Before You”, so the verb that finished the sentence was the part lost. We removed “Your Site” and kept the rest: “Free AdSense Eligibility Checker Tool: Test Before You Apply”, 60 characters, about 547 px.

Google gives no number for titles or for descriptions. Its documentation says they are truncated as needed, typically to fit the width of the device. Width is the real limit, and a character count is only a rough stand-in for it.

Pixels, not characters

Letters are not the same width, so two titles of the same length can occupy very different space. We measured four with Arial’s glyph widths at 20 px. These are estimates, since Google’s own rendering also depends on its font and layout, but the gaps are far larger than the error.

The first two are the same words, and capitals alone push the title 105 px past the 600 px line. The last two show a 50-character title wider than a 53-character one. The 600 px figure and the 920 px we use for a desktop description in the same preview are our estimates, not Google’s, and Google can change its layout at any time.

That is why our checker passes titles of 30 to 60 characters rather than a single limit. A checker can count characters but cannot see a font. The mixed-case titles in this guide, apart from the deliberately narrow one, run 9 to 10 px per character at this size, so 60 characters is roughly 540 to 600 px. Capitals, wide letters such as W and M, and strings of digits break the rule, so measure any title that is near the edge. Whatever the width, put the words that carry the meaning first: the end is what gets cut.

What Google rewrites, and from where

Google does not treat your title tag as final. Its documentation says title links are generated automatically from several sources: the title element, the main visible title on the page, headings such as the h1, og:title, other prominent text, anchor text from links pointing at the page, and WebSite structured data. For snippets, the page content is the primary source, and the meta description is only sometimes used.

Google does not say when it swaps one source for another. Our judgment, not a Google statement, is that three kinds of title are the likeliest to be replaced: vague ones such as “Home”, repeated ones that every page on the site shares, and stuffed ones that repeat the same keyword. Google’s guidance points the same way: a unique title per page, no keyword stuffing, and a short site name separated from the title by a delimiter.

To see what Google actually shows, search for the page by its name and compare the result with your tag. If they differ, look at the other inputs. When the title tag, the h1 and og:title describe three different things, Google has a real choice to make and you did not make it for them, so align the three on one topic. For snippets, page content is Google’s primary source, so make the opening paragraph able to stand on its own as a description.

5 rewrites you can adapt

The sites below are invented, and the widths are estimates measured the same way as above. Each fix changes one thing.

The pattern behind all five is the same: the subject of the page first, one specific promise, the site name last and short. Note that the second fix does not add a keyword. It replaces a label with the thing the page does, which is also what a person scanning results is looking for.

A formula for descriptions

Google’s documentation names no length limit for descriptions and says nothing about an effect on ranking, so treat a description as copy written for the click. We write ours in one plain sentence with 3 parts: what the reader gets, the one concrete detail that proves it, and the condition or format when that matters. Our checker accepts 70 to 165 characters, and the preview then tells you whether the width fits.

Here is a weak description for an invented gardening page, with a rewrite:

Before (118 characters, about 718 px):
Learn everything about garlic planting in this comprehensive guide to garlic, garlic bulbs and growing garlic at home.

After (141 characters, about 883 px):
When to plant garlic in autumn, how deep to set each clove, how far apart, and when to mulch, with a month-by-month timeline for a small bed.

The first promises “everything” and says nothing; it also repeats the keyword 4 times. The second answers the questions the page answers, in the order a gardener asks them. A calculator page follows the same shape: “Enter your loan, rate and extra monthly payment to see how many years and how much interest an overpayment removes. Runs in your browser.” “Runs in your browser” answers the question a reader has before clicking.

Never reuse one description across pages. Google’s guidance asks for a description that is unique and faithful to its page, and a template sentence with the page name swapped in is the quickest way to fail both tests.

To check your own, paste the real title, description and URL into the snippet preview, and read the pixel bars before the character counts. The heading structure guide covers the h1 that should match your title, and search intent covers whether the promise in your title is the one people were looking for.