Meta Description &
Title Tag Checker
Paste your title and description, and see them measured in pixels rather than characters, cut exactly where Google would cut them, and scored across 13 quality checks. No login. No fluff.
Google truncates search snippets on pixel width, not character count. A title is cut at roughly 561 pixels and a meta description at roughly 985 pixels, measured in the Arial that Google renders them in. That is why a 60-character title of narrow letters survives while a 55-character title of wide ones does not. Aim for a title under 561 pixels and a description of 120 to 155 characters that also stays under 985 pixels.
Screaming Frog's current SEO Spider thresholds. The 600 and 920 figures most other tools quote are Screaming Frog's own older numbers, before they raised the description limit to 985. Nobody has Google's actual figures, so pick the set your team works to.
Title checks
Description checks
- Titles are cut at about 561 pixels, descriptions at about 985. Characters are a rough proxy, pixels are the actual rule.
- Aim for 120–155 characters on a description. That range almost always lands inside the pixel budget.
- Wide characters cost more. A title of capitals and Ws will truncate far earlier than the same character count in lowercase.
- Include your primary keyword naturally, near the front. Google bolds query matches in both the title and the description.
- Avoid starting with “Welcome to” or “We are”. The searcher doesn’t care yet. Lead with value.
- Each page on your site needs a unique title and description. Duplicates dilute click-through potential.
Paste one page per line as title | description, separated by a vertical bar. Up to 100 rows. Everything is measured in your browser, so nothing is uploaded anywhere.
Why pixel width, not character count
Almost every free checker counts characters. Google does not. It renders your snippet in Arial, measures the result in pixels, and cuts at the nearest whole word once the line runs out of room. A capital W is roughly three times the width of a lowercase l, so two titles of identical character length can truncate in completely different places.
That is why character-count advice keeps letting people down. Sixty characters is an average, and averages break on exactly the titles you care about: the ones with brand names, capitals, or numbers in them.
The same character count, four times the width. Both of these are 56 characters. Only one of them fits.
Here is the part most tools skip: the industry does not agree on the numbers. This one defaults to 561 pixels for titles and 985 for descriptions, the current thresholds in Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider. Plenty of other checkers, and most of the blog posts feeding AI answers, quote 600 and 920 instead.
That second pair is not invented, it is just old. 920 was Screaming Frog’s own published description threshold before they raised it to 985, and 512 was their title figure before 561. The 600 and 920 set has simply been copied from article to article for long enough that it now outnumbers the current one. You can switch between both above and see what each says about the same snippet.
The font sizes, 20px Arial for titles and 14px for descriptions, are inferred rather than published. Screaming Frog previously documented 512 pixels at 18px Arial and 920 at 13px, and the current thresholds scale almost exactly to 20px and 14px.
One limitation worth stating plainly. The pass and fail thresholds are desktop. Mobile is a layout preview only, because Google has never published a mobile truncation point and Screaming Frog explicitly declined to publish one. Mobile also wraps rather than cutting on a single line, so a single-line pixel budget is the wrong shape for it in the first place. Anyone quoting you a precise mobile pixel limit has reverse-engineered it from a sample.
What is a meta description checker?
A meta description checker is a free tool that analyses the meta description tag on your web page and tells you whether it meets the quality signals that influence click-through rates in Google search results. It checks pixel width and character length, keyword inclusion, call-to-action language, and other on-page SEO factors, then surfaces specific recommendations to help you write a better snippet.
The meta description tag is an important HTML element that summarises your page content in one or two sentences. It appears beneath the clickable headline in search engine results pages (SERPs), acting as your first impression with potential customers before they decide whether to click your link. The meta description tag does not impact search rankings directly. Its job is to win the click.
A title tag checker does the same job for the blue headline above it. The title tag does carry ranking weight, which makes it the more consequential of the two, and it is also the one most often lost to truncation because titles run closer to their limit.
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What does this checker analyse?
This free tool runs 13 checks every time you analyse: five on your title tag and eight on your meta description. Here is what each group looks at and why it matters. Need help fixing a wider on-page SEO issue? See GWContent’s on-page SEO service.
Title pixel width
Your title measured in 20px Arial against a 561 pixel budget. Over that, Google truncates at the nearest whole word and adds an ellipsis, and whatever sat at the end is gone.
Title uses the space
A title under about 285 pixels leaves half the snippet empty. Short titles are safe from truncation but waste the most prominent line on the results page.
Keyword in the title, near the front
Unlike the description, the title tag does influence rankings. Front-loading the keyword also means it survives truncation and gets bolded when it matches the query.
Description pixel width
Your description measured in 14px Arial against a 985 pixel budget. This is the check that catches descriptions which pass a character count but still get cut.
Ideal character length
120 to 155 characters remains a good working target because it almost always lands inside the pixel budget. Treat it as a guide and the pixel figure as the ruling.
Call to action
Effective meta descriptions prompt immediate action. Words like “discover”, “learn”, “find”, “shop” and “explore” give users a clear signal about what happens when they click. A description without a CTA describes but does not invite.
Keyword presence
The meta description tag carries no direct ranking weight, and Google has confirmed this. However, Google bolds keywords in the snippet when they match the searcher’s query, making your result more eye-catching and improving click-through rates.
Strong opening
Openers like “We are” or “Our company offers” waste the most visible part of your snippet on brand ego rather than user benefit. Leading with what the reader will learn, find, or achieve consistently produces better click-through rates.
Power words
Words like “best”, “complete”, “trusted”, “proven” and “expert” add persuasive weight to a snippet. They differentiate your result from generic alternatives on the same SERP and signal credibility to potential customers.
No all-caps, proper capitalisation
Descriptions in all capitals read as spam to users and search engines, and one starting lowercase looks like a technical error. Both are checked on the title and the description.
Common meta description mistakes (and how to fix them)
Most underperforming snippets make the same handful of errors. These are the ones that show up most often in SEO audits. Each one costs real clicks.
Google measures pixels, not characters. Character counts are an average, and averages break on brand names, capitals and numbers.
The searcher does not care who you are yet. Leading with “We” buries the value behind your brand ego and wastes the most scannable part of the snippet.
A description without a CTA describes but does not invite. Every snippet should tell the user what to do next. Without an action word, you leave clicks on the table.
Google truncates past roughly 985 pixels, usually right before your CTA. If the user never sees the action point, they never click.
Duplicate meta descriptions confuse search engines and give users no reason to click one result over another on the same site.
Google rewrites meta descriptions when it decides another excerpt better serves the searcher’s query. The most common cause is a description that is too generic or mismatched to the page content.
Meta description length: a complete guide
Meta description length is one of the most frequently misunderstood elements of on-page SEO. There is no official character limit, and Google has confirmed it does not set one, because it does not measure in characters at all. What it measures is pixel width, cutting descriptions at roughly 985 pixels and titles at roughly 561. The character ranges below remain a useful working guide, because they land inside that budget for most normal English text.
If you use Google Search Console, filter your pages by impressions and sort by low CTR. These are the pages where a better title and description will have the most immediate impact on traffic. If you have dozens of pages to fix, a content refresh programme will help you prioritise them systematically.
How to write a meta description that gets more clicks
The meta description tag does not affect your search rankings directly. Its main task is to convert an impression into a click. Every word should answer the searcher’s implicit question: “Why should I click this result instead of the others?”
Start with the user benefit, not your brand
Lead with what the reader gets: the outcome, the answer, the product, not your company name. “Find the best running shoes for flat feet” outperforms “We stock a wide range of footwear for all needs” every time.
Include your most important keywords naturally
Weave your primary keyword into the description naturally, not stuffed. When Google bolds keywords in search results that match the query, your snippet stands out visually against competitors.
Check the pixel width before you publish
Paste the finished title and description into the checker above. If either is over budget, the preview shows you the exact words you are about to lose, which is usually the call to action.
Match the commercial intent of the searcher
A product page description should read differently from a blog post. Commercial intent pages need urgency and specificity. Informational pages should promise depth and clarity.
Make every page’s title and description unique
Duplicate meta descriptions across your site dilute click-through potential and can confuse search engines. Each page deserves its own unique, tailored snippet.
This tool was built by Graeme Whiles, an SEO and AEO strategist with over a decade of content marketing experience. Graeme has managed organic growth strategies for brands including Originality.ai (organic traffic +325%), Connecteam (+62.6%), 6sense, Practice Better, and Peppr, independently through GWContent. The checks in this tool are based on published Google guidance, established on-page SEO best practice, and direct SERP testing across hundreds of client pages. Pixel thresholds are taken from Screaming Frog’s published SEO Spider limits and were verified in September 2026.
This checker is best suited for SEOs, content managers, and website owners who want a fast, free way to audit individual titles and descriptions before publishing or updating pages. If you have a large site with hundreds of pages to audit, you will need a crawler like Screaming Frog alongside this tool. For a fully managed AI Visibility Audit or deeper on-page work, GWContent offers dedicated services.
Frequently asked questions
There is no single agreed answer, which is worth knowing before you trust any tool that gives you one. This checker defaults to 561 pixels for a title and 985 for a description, the current thresholds in Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider. Many other tools quote 600 and 920, which were Screaming Frog’s own older figures before they raised the description limit. Google publishes nothing, so treat either pair as a working approximation rather than a rule, and use the same one consistently.
Because Google measures pixels, not characters. Capitals, wide letters and numbers take up far more room than narrow lowercase ones, so a 60-character title full of Ws and Ms can run past 700 pixels while a 60-character title of narrow letters sits comfortably under 400. Check the pixel figure rather than the character count.
Nothing happens because of the character count itself. What matters is the pixel width. A 65-character title of narrow lowercase letters can sit comfortably under the limit, while a 55-character title in capitals runs well past it. If your title does exceed the pixel budget, Google cuts it at the nearest whole word and adds an ellipsis, and anything after that point is simply not shown.
Again, the character count is a proxy. Google truncates at roughly 985 pixels, and 155 characters of ordinary English usually lands just inside that. Go past it and the end of your description is cut, which in most cases means losing the call to action. Google may also decide to write its own snippet instead, which it does more often on longer, more generic descriptions.
No. The meta description tag does not directly affect your position in Google search results. Google has confirmed it carries no ranking weight. Its role is entirely click-through focused. A well-written description converts impressions into clicks. The title tag is different: that one does influence rankings.
The recommended range is 120–155 characters, because that nearly always lands inside the 985 pixel budget for normal English text. Treat the character range as a working guide and the pixel measurement as the ruling, since that is what Google actually applies.
Not always. Google may replace your meta description with an alternative snippet pulled from your page content if its algorithm decides another excerpt better matches the search query. Writing descriptions that closely reflect the page topic and searcher intent reduces the chance Google overrides them.
Not directly. AI Overviews pull content from page copy and structured data, not specifically from the meta description tag. However, pages with clear, entity-rich descriptions that match query intent are more likely to have their content surfaced in AI Overviews. Well-written meta descriptions are part of a broader AEO strategy.
Google Search Console is the starting point: filter by high impressions and low CTR. For a full technical SEO audit, tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider crawl your entire site and flag missing, duplicate, or over-length titles and meta descriptions at scale, in pixels as well as characters.
The meta title tag is the clickable blue headline in Google search results, cut at roughly 561 pixels. The meta description appears below the title and URL, cut at roughly 985 pixels, providing a longer summary of the page content. Together they form the complete search snippet. The title influences rankings; the description does not.
Want better rankings, not just better descriptions?
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