Google snippet preview

Google SERP Preview: write your title and description and see how you appear in search

The snippet is the block Google shows in the search results: the blue clickable title, the grey description below it, and the URL with your site's breadcrumb. It's the first thing a person reads before deciding whether to open your page or a competitor's. This tool lets you write your title and description and see the preview update in real time, exactly as it would look on desktop and mobile, before you even publish the page.

Here's the point almost everyone gets wrong: Google doesn't truncate by character count, it truncates by pixel width. The title cuts off around 600 pixels, usually about 55-60 characters, but it depends on the letters. A line full of "M" and "W" takes up more room than one full of "i" and "l", so two titles of 58 characters can behave differently. The description runs about 155-160 characters on desktop and far fewer on mobile. That's why a Google SERP preview beats a character counter: you see the exact spot where the ellipsis appears.

Google rewrites the description on its own in many cases, especially when the search query contains words that aren't in yours: it pulls a snippet from your page that does contain them. It touches the title less often, but shortens or replaces it when it's too long or stuffed with repeated keywords. Writing a strong preview, with the keyword near the start of the title and a description that says what's on the page, is the most direct way to lift your CTR without climbing positions: same rank, more clicks.