Preview your Google result, to the pixel.

Pixels, not characters

Google shortens titles and snippets to fit the screen, so the real limit is width, not a number of characters. Letters vary a lot: a capital W takes several times the room of a lowercase i or l, and capitals are wider than lowercase letters on average. Two titles of the same length can be cut at very different points, which is why a character count is only a rough guide.

Two consequences matter most. Google shortens long titles before they reach the device, so a phone shows the same shortened title as a desktop, wrapped onto two lines when needed. Snippets get an extra line on a phone, but the lines are so much narrower that less of your description fits. Put the point of the page in the first few words of both. A few other things take up room:

• A date shown before the snippet uses part of its first line.
• Words that match the search appear in bold, and bold letters are wider.
• A title in capitals is cut sooner than the same words in lowercase.

Why Google rewrites titles

Google calls the headline of a result its title link. It generates it automatically, aiming to represent and describe each result as well as possible, and draws on several sources: the <title> element, the main title visible on the page, headings such as <h1>, the og:title tag, other large or prominent text, anchor text on the page, the text of links pointing to the page and WebSite structured data.

When Google detects a problem with a title, it may generate a better one from those sources. Its documentation lists the usual problems:

• Half-empty titles, with part of the text missing.
• Obsolete titles, such as last year’s date on a page that has since been updated.
• Inaccurate titles that don’t reflect what the page is about.
• Micro-boilerplate: near-identical titles across a set of pages that hide what makes each page different.
• No clear main title, because several headings carry the same visual weight.
• A language or writing system that differs from the page’s main content.
• A site name repeated in the title when Google already shows it in the result.

Writing titles that hold up

Google’s own advice is brief: describe the page clearly and concisely, avoid vague labels such as “Home”, don’t repeat the same words or phrases, avoid boilerplate shared across pages, and give your brand once, at the start or the end, separated by a hyphen, colon or pipe. Write the title in the same language as the page.

A pattern that works for most pages is topic, then what’s different, then brand. The topic is what the searcher typed, in their words. The difference is the reason to choose this page: a location, a pricing model, an audience or a format. Keep the brand short and put it last, except on the home page. Let the main heading say the same thing in its own words, so Google sees one clear main title.

Where snippets come from

Snippets are mostly built from the page content, using the text most relevant to the search, so the same page can show different snippets for different queries. Google uses your meta description when it gives a more accurate summary than the page content alone. There is no length limit on meta descriptions; Google truncates them to fit the device.

Write a unique description for every important page. Google says identical or similar descriptions across a site aren’t helpful, and long strings of keywords are less likely to be shown. Say what the page covers and add a concrete detail the snippet would otherwise lack, such as a price, an author or a publication date. On large, database-driven sites, Google encourages generating descriptions from your data, as long as they read naturally and vary from page to page.

You can also limit snippets. nosnippet stops Google from showing one for the page, max-snippet caps its length in characters, and the data-nosnippet attribute keeps a passage out when it is set on a span, div or section element. Use them with care: nosnippet and max-snippet also apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode, where they stop or limit the use of your content as a direct input.

Acting on the preview

If the title is cut, move the topic to the front, shorten or drop the brand, and remove filler before you remove meaning. If the description is cut on mobile but not on desktop, make sure the first sentence still works on its own. If your results usually carry a date, allow for the room it takes.

Treat the preview as the version you control. Google can still rewrite the title or choose other text for the snippet, so after a change, search for the page and see what appears. Recrawling can take from a few days to a few weeks. Then compare clicks and click-through rate in Search Console’s Performance report over periods of the same length, and read click-through rate alongside average position, because it rises and falls with position.