Title Tag and Meta Description Length Limits

Last updated 2026-08-05

The short answer: keep titles to about 30 to 60 characters and meta descriptions to about 70 to 160. The accurate answer: Google does not count characters at all. It renders your text and cuts it when it runs out of horizontal space, so a title full of capital letters and Ms truncates sooner than one full of lowercase Is and Ls.

Character guidance that works in practice

The real limit is pixel width

Google renders results in Arial at fixed sizes and truncates with an ellipsis when the text exceeds the container. The widths below are the commonly observed values and are the ones SEO Audit Kit measures against. Treat them as heuristics: Google adjusts the layout regularly, and they differ by device and by result type.

Two consequences follow. First, the same 58-character title can fit on desktop and be cut on mobile, so check both. Second, character counters disagree with reality on wide text: MOBILE BANKING PLATFORM COMPARISON is 34 characters and much wider than 34 characters of ordinary prose.

Write for the cut

1. Front-load the phrase the page targets. If truncation happens, it should remove your brand, not your subject.
2. Put the brand last, after a separator, and drop it entirely on pages where space is tight.
3. Make the first 70 characters of the description a complete promise, so the page still sells itself if the tail disappears.
4. Write both per page. Templated titles like "Product name | Category | Site" repeated across hundreds of URLs are the single most common cause of duplicate titles.
5. Skip keyword stacking. A title reading "SEO Audit, SEO Checker, SEO Tool, On-Page SEO" is both wide and unappealing, and Google may replace it.
6. Avoid ALL CAPS and decorative symbols. They cost pixels and buy nothing.

<title>How to Audit On-Page SEO: A Practical Checklist</title>
<meta
  name="description"
  content="A step-by-step on-page SEO audit for a single page: indexability,
           title, headings, links, images, and schema, with what good looks
           like for each check."
/>

Google may rewrite what you wrote

Google has said it generates its own title link when it judges yours a poor fit, usually pulling from the H1, prominent on-page text, anchor text pointing at the page, or the site name. Snippets are query-dependent by design: it will lift a passage from your body copy when that answers the search better than your description does.

• Common triggers for a rewritten title: boilerplate repeated site-wide, keyword stuffing, a title that describes the site rather than the page, an empty or missing title, or a title that clashes with the visible H1.
• What you can control: make the title and the H1 agree, keep it specific to the page, and it will usually be kept as written.
• What you cannot control: there is no directive that forces your title to be used. nositelinkssearchbox and max-snippet limit other features, not title selection.

How to check before you publish

1. Read the rendered title, not the source. If a framework or a plugin rewrites it client side, the source lies to you.
2. Measure the text in the right font and size rather than counting characters. In the console, a canvas 2D context and measureText gives you the exact width.
3. Check desktop and mobile separately.
4. Check for duplicates across the site by searching your own domain, or by exporting titles from your CMS.

const ctx = document.createElement('canvas').getContext('2d');
ctx.font = '20px Arial, sans-serif';           // desktop title
ctx.measureText(document.title).width;         // compare against ~600

Common questions

Does title length affect rankings?

Length itself is not a ranking factor. What length affects is whether your subject survives truncation in the result, which affects click-through rate. A title that is cut mid-phrase looks careless and sells less, and that is the cost you are avoiding.

Is the meta description a ranking factor?

No. Google has said for years that it does not use the meta description as a ranking signal. It is worth writing well because it often becomes the snippet, and the snippet decides whether a ranking turns into a visit.

Why is Google showing a different description than the one I wrote?

Snippets are generated per query. When a passage from your page answers the search more directly than your description does, Google uses the passage. This is normal and usually good for you. If you never want a snippet drawn from the page, the nosnippet and max-snippet robots directives limit it, at the cost of showing less.

What happens if I leave the meta description out?

Google writes one from the page. On pages with clear, well-structured copy the result is often fine, which is why some large sites skip descriptions on long-tail pages. On commercial pages where the pitch matters, write your own.