Google SERP preview: see your title and meta description in Google

What is a SERP snippet?

SERP means search engine results page. Your snippet is your entry on it: the site name and address, a blue title and a short description underneath. The title usually comes from the page’s <title> tag, the description from its meta description.

The snippet is your shop window in Google. It decides whether people click on you or on the result below.

How to use the SERP preview

1. Type the page title: the one in the <title> tag, not the heading on the page.
2. Type the meta description.
3. Paste the full address, like https://example.dk/services.
4. Watch the two bars. If the text fits, it says “Fits.”; if not, the tool shows how many pixels too wide it is and where Google adds the “…”.

Title length: why pixels, not characters

Google doesn’t cut titles at a fixed number of characters. It cuts at a width: on desktop, titles are shown in roughly 20px Arial and stop at about 600 pixels. A title full of wide letters like W and M fits fewer characters than one with i, l and t.

So “keep titles under 60 characters” is a rule of thumb, not a rule. Measure the width, and you know.

How long should a meta description be?

Descriptions are shown at about 14px and usually get two lines on desktop, around 920 pixels, or roughly 150–160 characters. Anything past that becomes an ellipsis.

Put the part that earns the click in the first 120 characters: mobile results often show less.

How to write a good title and meta description

Take a plumber in Aarhus: “Plumber in Aarhus: fast help, fixed prices | Hansen VVS”. What people search comes first, the reason to click second, the brand last.

• Lead with what the page is about, in the words people search.
• Add your brand at the end if there is room.
• Give every page its own title. Duplicates compete with each other.
• Make the description answer the search and end with a reason to click: a fixed price, opening hours, “call today”.

Google may rewrite your snippet

Google rewrites titles and descriptions when it thinks another text fits the search better, often a heading from the page, or a sentence near the searched words. You can’t turn that off. But a title that matches the page’s main heading and a description that answers the search make it much less likely.

Common mistakes

• The same title on every page, often just the business name.
• Keywords repeated three times in one title.
• No meta description, so Google picks a random sentence from the page.
• The important part last, where the ellipsis cuts it off.