Title tag and meta description checker with a SERP preview

Google cuts titles and descriptions when they run out of room on the screen, and letters take different amounts of room. At Google’s 20px title size, a “W” is 18.9px wide and an “i” is 4.4px. Two 60-character titles can differ by more than 200 pixels.

So the checker adds up the real width of every character in Arial, the font Google uses for results, at each layout’s font size. It then cuts the text where Google would: at the last whole word that leaves room for the “...”.

The character ranges match the rules in LogNorm’s site audit, so a snippet that passes here passes there.

Paste text to draft a new snippet, or fetch a URL to check what is live. Both modes update the preview as you type.

1. 1
   Type or fetch

   Paste a title and description, or switch to Check a URL to pull them from a public page's head.
2. 2
   Add your keyword

   Optional. The checker tells you whether the keyword appears, and whether it sits early enough to survive truncation.
3. 3
   Compare desktop and mobile

   Toggle the preview. The bars under each field show the width against both limits.
4. 4
   Edit until the warnings clear

   Fix anything marked Fix or Warning. Tips are judgement calls.

Fetching a URL also reports duplicate title or description tags, a noindex directive, the H1 and the canonical URL. Those come from the same extraction LogNorm’s crawler uses in the site audit.

Each warning names a problem that costs clicks, and the text says what to change.

• Missing title or description: Google writes its own from headings, links or page text, and it rarely makes the case for the click.
• Too wide: the end of the text is replaced by an ellipsis. Whatever you put last, often the brand or the offer, disappears.
• Too short: you leave room unused that could name the audience, the benefit or a differentiator.
• Repeated words: the same word twice reads as keyword stuffing and is a common reason Google rewrites a title.
• Keyword missing or late: searchers scan for the words they typed, and Google bolds matching words in the snippet.
• Title and description identical: the description should add what the title can't fit.

Google’s result uses the title tag, social networks use og:title, and readers on the page see the H1. They can differ, but they should tell the same story.

When the title and H1 disagree, Google is more likely to replace your title with text from the page. The URL check shows both side by side, so mismatches are easy to spot.

Lead with what the searcher typed, then give them a reason to pick you. Everything else is trimming.

Titles

Put the keyword first and the brand last, after a separator. Keep each page’s title unique and close to its H1. For example: Project management software for small teams | Acme.

Descriptions

Write one or two plain sentences: what the page gives the reader and one concrete detail, such as a price, a number of templates or a free plan. Front-load it, since mobile shows less. For example: Plan sprints, track tasks and ship on time. Free for teams of up to 5.

At scale

Templates are where most metadata problems start: a missing description on every blog post, or one title shared by every pricing variant. The free website SEO checker finds them across 25 pages, and the site audit lists every affected URL.