Meta Tag & SERP Preview

How long a title and description can be

Google typically shows around 60 characters of a title and roughly 150 to 160 characters of a description before truncating with an ellipsis. Those are guidelines rather than hard limits, because Google actually measures rendered width in pixels, so a title full of wide capitals truncates earlier than one of the same length in narrow lowercase. The character counters here are the practical approximation, and the preview shows how the snippet reads once assembled.

Truncation is not the only reason to write short

A truncated title is not automatically a problem — what matters is whether the part that survives still earns the click. Front-load the distinctive words and let the brand or boilerplate be the part that gets cut. The same applies to the description: put the specific claim first, because the tail is both the most likely to be dropped and the least likely to be read.

It is also worth remembering that Google frequently rewrites descriptions, and sometimes titles, to match the query. Writing one that fits does not guarantee it is the one displayed, but a clear, query-relevant description is far more likely to be kept than a vague one.