SERP preview.

The advice to keep titles under 60 characters is a rough approximation of the actual rule. Google cuts titles at roughly 580 pixels and descriptions at roughly 990. Because "Illinois" and "WWWWWWWW" have the same character count and wildly different widths, a title full of capitals and wide letters gets truncated well before 60 characters, while one full of narrow letters survives past 65.

This tool measures the rendered width using a canvas at the font and size Google uses, so what you see is what will fit. The meters show how close you are to each limit and whether the text will be cut.

Two things to remember. Google frequently rewrites titles it considers unhelpful, particularly when they are keyword-stuffed or do not match the page content — a well-written title is more likely to survive intact. And your description does not affect ranking directly, but it does affect click-through rate, which is the entire reason the ranking matters.

Worth knowing

• Put the distinctive part first. If it gets truncated, the ending is what disappears.
• Write the description as an ad, not a summary. Its only job is earning the click.
• Every page needs a unique title and description. Duplicates across a site are one of the most common and most fixable SEO problems.