SERP snippet preview tool: see your title cut measured in pixels

Who this page is for: anyone writing title tags and meta descriptions who wants to see the result before publishing, instead of discovering the cut in a screenshot three weeks later. If your question is about the body copy of the page rather than the snippet, the word counter returns sentences, paragraphs, reading time and term density. If you want to know whether the text is written in a way an AI system can quote, go to the AI citability checker. This page is about one thing only: what shows up on the results page and what gets left out.

Google does not cut by character. It cuts by width.

The rule everyone repeats says a title has 60 characters and a description has 155. That is an average, and it fails exactly where it matters, because Google does not count letters: it draws the text and cuts when the horizontal space runs out. Letters have different widths, and the difference is large.

Run the numbers on ten identical letters, at the 20 pixel size Google uses for desktop titles. Ten letters "M" take 166.6 pixels. Ten letters "i" take 44.4 pixels. Same character count, almost four times the difference in space. That is why two titles of 58 characters can have opposite fates: one shows in full and the other loses its last three words.

The description works similarly, with one extra detail: it does not live inside a single limit, it lives inside a number of lines. Desktop shows two lines; mobile shows three. The text wraps inside the width of the result and whatever does not fit on the last allowed line turns into an ellipsis. So a description can be cut even with fewer characters than one that survives intact: all it takes is one long word pushing the line break to the wrong place.

This tool does both things at once. It measures the real width of your text on the metric of the font Google uses, and it draws the result at that same width, so what you see in the preview is exactly what the math computed. No estimating by average character width.

How to use it

1. Pick where the result shows up, desktop or mobile. The two formats cut in different places, and both are worth checking before you publish.
2. Paste the URL, the title and the meta description of the page. Everything recalculates on every keystroke, with nothing to click.
3. Look at the how Google shows it panel. Wherever an ellipsis appears, the text was cut there: whatever came after does not exist for the person searching.
4. Check the characters that disappear row. It tells you how much of your text is being thrown away, which is usually more convincing than a percentage.
5. Adjust the result width if the layout in your niche differs from the default, and tick show a date if your pages appear dated in search, because the date eats description space.

How it works: the measuring stick

Every number comes from a table of Arial widths, the font Google uses to draw the organic result. Each character has an advance width defined in units of one thousand per em, and the rest is arithmetic:

The table is fixed, and that is a design decision. The text could be measured in the browser with the canvas API, and several preview tools do exactly that, but then the result would depend on the fonts installed on the visitor machine: the same title would return different numbers on your computer and on your client computer. With the table, the measurement is identical everywhere and anyone can verify it.

Accents change nothing, which helps anyone writing outside English: in Arial, the advance width of an accented vowel equals the plain letter. Ideographs, syllabaries and emoji are treated as a full em width, which is the convention across the market. The cut prefers the word boundary, because that is what Google does: it drops the last whole word rather than splitting it.

Worked example (reproduces the default output)

The sample already loaded is the title and description of a running shoe guide, in the desktop format. Checking what the tool shows, number by number:

• Title: 100 characters and 961 pixels wide, against the 600 pixels of a single line. The panel reads 160% of the space used.
• Title cut: the preview shows "How to Choose the Best Running Shoes in 2026: A Complete" and stops there. 44 characters disappear, and with them the fact that the guide covers 12 tested models, plus the store name.
• Description: 209 characters and 1,310 pixels, against the 1,200 pixels of two lines. That is 109% of the space, and the second line ends on "for each foot" followed by an ellipsis: 24 characters disappear.
• URL: the trail reads examplestore.com › blog › best-running-shoes, and the "URL truncated" row answers no, because it fits the result width comfortably.
• Verdict: both parts are being cut, which is the scenario where Google most often rewrites the snippet on its own.

Now switch the selector to mobile without touching the text. The width drops to 400 pixels, but the title gains a second line, so the space rises to 800 pixels and the cut gets much lighter: the title measures 865 pixels, 108% of the space, and loses only 14 characters instead of 44. Same text, two different outcomes, which is exactly why checking a single format is not enough.

The reference measurements

These are the defaults of the tool, verified in August 2026. Google publishes none of them and changes the layout without notice, so treat them as an order of magnitude, and the width field is there for you to adjust when your niche shows something else:

• Desktop: 600 pixels of usable width. Title on 1 line of Arial 20. Description on up to 2 lines of Arial 14.
• Mobile: 400 pixels of usable width. Title on up to 2 lines of Arial 18. Description on up to 3 lines of Arial 14.
• Date: when Google shows the publication date, it goes before the description and eats into its space. A date written out takes roughly 12 to 15 characters off the first line.
• URL: since the layout change, Google shows the domain and the path trail instead of the raw URL. A long path gets abbreviated and query parameters do not appear at all.

How to read each number

Space used is the fastest read. Below 90% you have real slack; between 90% and 100% the text fits today and cuts on the next word someone adds; above 100% it is already cutting. Aiming for roughly 85% on the title is sensible: enough slack for the text to survive an edit without becoming a problem.

Characters that disappear answers the question a percentage cannot: what exactly is lost. Forty odd characters at the end of a title are usually the brand name and the differentiator of the content. If what disappears is irrelevant, the cut is not urgent. If what disappears is the reason someone would click, the fix is immediate, and it almost always means moving the information to the front rather than deleting words.

Lines used matters more on the description than on the title. A description filling one and a half lines on desktop is wasting argument space; one filling two full lines and still cutting is asking for an edit. The target is to fill the lines available and end the sentence before the edge.

The URL trail is the one field that is almost never a problem, which is why it is easy to forget. It becomes a problem when the path has many levels or when the slug repeats words already present in the title, which takes space and adds no information.

Known limits

The biggest limit is not in the tool, it is in Google: it rewrites titles on a large share of queries and descriptions on most of them. A preview shows what you proposed, not what search will display for every query. Even so, writing a snippet that fits removes one of the known reasons for a rewrite, and it is the only part of the process under your control.

The reference widths are approximations. Google adjusts the layout over time, shows special result formats that change the space available, and phone screen sizes vary from device to device. The difference between 590 and 610 pixels changes no writing decision, but the difference between 600 and 900 would, which is why the width is editable.

Bold text is not part of the math. Since the bolded terms depend on each person query, measuring at regular weight is the more stable estimate, and the highlight field exists only to show the visual effect. In the same spirit, the preview shows no review stars, sitelinks, price or any of the other extras Google adds when a page carries structured data: if you want those extras, the path is the Article schema generator or the FAQ schema generator.

From a measured snippet to a tested click

Fitting is the floor, not the goal. Once the title and the description fit, the next question is which version makes more people click and what happens to the people who do:

• If the destination is a landing page, run it through the landing page grader before fighting for more clicks to a page that does not convert.
• Before deciding whether one version of a page beats another, check how much traffic the test would need in the sample size calculator.
• With the test live, read the verdict in the statistical significance calculator instead of calling it on the first good day.
• To find out whether the site is ready to be quoted by AI systems, and not only ranked, use the GEO readiness checker.

Frequently asked questions

What is the character limit for a title tag on Google?

There is no character limit, and that is why every "keep it under 60 characters" rule misses so often. Google cuts the title by the width of the rendered text, and that width depends on the letters you picked. A 60 character title made of narrow letters fits comfortably in 600 pixels; a 60 character title made of wide letters overflows. The 60 characters figure is an average that works by accident and fails on the cases that matter. Use the preview above to get the real number for your text.

How many pixels wide is a Google result?

The reference used here is 600 pixels of usable width on desktop, with the title on one line of Arial 20 and the description on two lines of Arial 14. On mobile the reference is 400 pixels, with the title on up to two lines and the description on up to three. Google does not publish these values and adjusts the interface without notice, so treat them as an order of magnitude. The width field is editable for exactly that reason: if your niche shows a different layout, change the number and everything recalculates.

Why does Google show a different title from mine?

Because the title tag is a strong suggestion, not an instruction. Google rewrites the title on a large share of queries when it decides yours does not describe the page well or does not answer the query, and it uses an H1, a passage from the body or the site name instead. A title that gets cut mid phrase is one of the most common triggers for that swap, because the cut is a signal that the text was not written for the space available. Keeping your title fully visible does not guarantee it will be used, but it removes one of the reasons to replace it.

Does a meta description need 155 characters?

It needs no fixed length, and here too the character count is an approximation of the real constraint, which is pixels per line. What decides the outcome is how many lines the text takes inside the width of the result: two on desktop, three on mobile. A short description that answers the query beats a long one that gets cut mid sentence. Google, in fact, rewrites descriptions more often than it rewrites titles, usually pulling the passage of the page that matches the query.

What is the Arial metric used in the measurement?

It is the table of advance widths of every character in the Arial font, in units of one thousand per em, which is the metric the typeface was designed with. The tool sums those widths and multiplies by the font size, which gives the width in pixels. We use a fixed table instead of measuring inside the browser because the number has to be identical on every machine: a measurement taken with the fonts installed on a visitor computer would change from device to device and could not be verified by anyone.

Does it work for Japanese, Russian or emoji in the title?

It does, with one honest caveat. Ideographs, syllabaries and emoji are measured as a full em width, which is the convention used by practically every preview tool, and the result is a good approximation. Latin alphabets with accents are exact, because an accent does not change the advance width in Arial: an "a" with an acute accent measures the same as a plain "a". If your site is written in a non Latin script, verify the real result on the search page before locking the text.

Is the Google bolding included in the measurement?

It is not, and that is deliberate. Google renders the terms that match the query in bold, and bold is slightly wider than regular text, but which words get bolded changes with every query. Since the query cannot be known in advance, the measurement uses the regular weight, which is the more stable estimate. The highlighted term field exists only so you can see the visual effect, and it changes no number on the page.

Does the tool send my title and description to a server?

No. The whole measurement runs in JavaScript inside your browser with no network call: the text never leaves your machine, is never stored and is never logged. That matters when the page is not published yet and the title gives away a launch. You can confirm it by opening the network tab of your browser and typing: no request goes out while the numbers change.

Keep going

To understand how search and AI answers treat what you publish, read CRO vs SEO, what changes in each, the guide to generative engine optimization and how to build quotable blocks in FAQ content for AI citation.