SERP Snippet Preview
Type a title, URL and meta description to see how the snippet looks in Google's desktop and mobile results — including where each line gets cut, measured in pixels the way Google actually truncates, not by character count. Runs entirely in your browser.
About this tool
Type a page's title, URL and meta description and the tool draws the search result the way Google would render it — a desktop card and a mobile card side by side, each with the favicon square, the site name, a breadcrumb-styled URL, the blue title link and the grey description. The catch it exists for is truncation: Google cuts the title and description by rendered pixel width, not by character count, so "Illinois plumbing licence renewal" survives far longer than "MMWWMM WWMMWW plumbing" of the same length. The tool measures each line in the browser with the same font metrics a browser uses and shows where the ellipsis falls, plus a counter under the inputs giving the character count and the pixel width for both the desktop and the wider mobile limits. Nothing is fetched — no page is crawled, no favicon is loaded, the preview is built entirely from what you type.
When to use it
Questions
Why measure in pixels instead of counting characters?
Because that is what Google does. The result snippet is rendered text, and Google truncates it when the line runs past a fixed width in pixels, then adds an ellipsis. A title of 60 narrow characters (lots of i, l, t, f) can be visibly shorter than one of 50 wide characters (m, w, capital letters), so a character count is only a rough proxy. This tool measures the actual rendered width of your text in the browser, using the font Google renders the snippet in, and shows the cut where it really falls.
What are the ~580px and ~990px limits, and how reliable are they?
They are the approximate widths at which Google's desktop layout truncates the title (around 580px, very roughly 60 characters) and the description (around 990px, very roughly 155–160 characters). They are rules of thumb, not published values: Google has changed the SERP layout many times — font, font size, container width, number of description lines — and the numbers drift each time. Treat the tool's cut-off as "this is close to the edge", not "this is the exact byte where it dies". Leaving a little slack is wise.
If my title and description fit, will Google show exactly what I wrote?
Often not. Google rewrites the displayed title for a large share of results — pulling from an H1, the site name, or anchor text — when it judges your title tag to be too long, keyword-stuffed, boilerplate, or a poor match for the query. It rewrites the description snippet even more often, generating it from a passage of the page body that contains the user's search terms. Writing a good title and description still matters: they are the starting point and the fallback, and they are what social platforms and other search engines display. But think of them as a strong suggestion, not a setting.
Where should I put my brand name in the title?
Usually at the end, after a pipe or dash: "Page-specific words first | Brand". The page-specific words are what match the query and what earns the click, so they belong in the part that is guaranteed to be visible; the brand is recognition and can be the bit that gets truncated without much loss. Drop the suffix entirely on pages where every pixel counts, or where the brand is already obvious from the URL shown above the title. The home page is the exception — leading with the brand there is fine.
Why do the desktop and mobile previews cut at different points?
The two layouts have different widths and slightly different type, so the same title can be whole on desktop and clipped on mobile, or vice versa. Mobile also tends to allow the title to wrap to more lines before truncating, while showing a narrower column. Since most searches happen on phones, it is worth checking the mobile card at least as carefully as the desktop one — this tool shows both so you do not have to guess.
Does the length of my title or description affect ranking?
No. There is no ranking bonus for a title of a particular length and no penalty for one that gets truncated. What length affects is the click-through rate: a title that is cut mid-word, or a description that trails off before the useful information, gives the searcher less reason to choose your result. So the goal is not to hit a magic number — it is to make sure the words that would make someone click are inside the visible part.
What about the dates, breadcrumbs, star ratings and sitelinks I see in real results?
Those are added by Google from other sources: the publish or update date from the page markup, breadcrumbs from BreadcrumbList structured data or the URL path, ratings and prices from Product or Review markup, sitelinks from Google's own understanding of your site. This tool previews the core three-line snippet — favicon, URL, title, description — because that is the part your title tag and meta description control. If you want the rich extras, that is a structured-data job, not a snippet-copy job.
How do I write a title that survives truncation?
Put the words that carry the meaning and match the query at the front, and let the less important words fall off the end. "Renew a plumbing licence in Illinois — fees, forms and deadlines" still communicates the page even if everything after the dash is cut. Avoid burying the topic behind a lead-in like "Everything you need to know about…", avoid repeating the same keyword, and keep the brand suffix short. The same principle applies to the description: front-load the answer or the hook in the first 120 characters or so.