Almost every SEO checklist gives the same advice: keep titles under 60 characters. It is a reasonable rule of thumb and a poor rule. Google does not count characters. It measures the rendered width of the text in pixels and cuts when it runs out of room.
That distinction matters because letters are not the same width. A title made of narrow letters can run past 70 characters and still fit. A title full of capitals and wide letters can get clipped at 52.
The numbers that actually apply
On desktop results, the title link is allotted roughly 580 pixels. On mobile the container is narrower but wraps to two lines, so the practical budget is larger in characters and smaller in any single line. Descriptions get around 990 pixels on desktop and considerably less on mobile.
Those figures move. Google has redesigned the result snippet repeatedly and will again. Treat them as a target range rather than a specification.
Why titles get rewritten anyway
Since 2021, Google has rewritten a large share of title links regardless of length. It substitutes H1 text, anchor text pointing at the page, or site name fragments when it judges your title unhelpful. Length is only one trigger. The others are worth knowing:
- Boilerplate repetition. If every title on the site ends with the same 30-character brand string, Google often drops it.
- Keyword stuffing. Titles built as a pipe-separated list of variations get replaced by something readable.
- Emptiness. A title that is just the brand name, or just the product SKU, invites a rewrite from body content.
- Mismatch. A title that promises something the page does not deliver gets replaced by something closer to the page.
A practical method
Write the title for the person scanning ten blue links, not for the counter. Put the distinguishing term first, because truncation eats the end of the string. Keep the brand suffix short, or drop it on pages where the brand adds nothing.
Then check the rendered width rather than the character count. Our SERP snippet preview measures pixel width for desktop and mobile and shows you where the cut falls. The meta tag analyzer pulls the live title off a published page so you can check what is actually deployed rather than what you think you wrote.
Descriptions are a different job
The meta description is not a ranking factor and has not been one for many years. It is ad copy. Its only job is to earn the click once you already rank, which means the useful test is not “does it contain the keyword” but “does it tell someone what they get if they click”.
Write one for every page that matters commercially. Skip it on thin utility pages and let Google assemble something from the content; it does that well enough on pages where nobody is choosing between you and a competitor.
What to do this week
Export your top 50 pages by impressions from Search Console. Run each title through the preview tool. Fix the ones that truncate before the distinguishing term. Ignore everything below the first 50 until those are done, because the rest of the list rarely moves enough to justify the hours.