Meta title & description length checker
Paste a URL and see the title tag and meta description as they stand, measured against the lengths Google is likely to cut short, with a preview of the result and the Open Graph and canonical tags underneath. No account needed.
What this checks
The tool requests the URL you enter and reads five things out of the HTML it gets back. It is one page per run, not a crawl.
- Title tag — the text search engines show as the headline of your result, and the text a browser tab shows.
- Meta description — the snippet underneath, when Google chooses to use what you wrote.
- Open Graph title and description — what appears when someone shares the page in a message or on social. These fall back to the title and description when absent, which is usually fine and occasionally wrong.
- Canonical tag — the URL the page nominates as the real one. A missing or mistaken canonical is how two versions of a page end up competing with each other.
How to read your results
Character counts and the amber warnings
A title outside 30–60 characters and a description outside 120–160 are flagged. These are practical thresholds, not rules. Google truncates snippets by pixel width, so an all-caps title of 55 characters can be cut while a narrow one of 62 survives. If you are one or two characters over, you are almost certainly fine.
The search result preview
The preview truncates at those same character limits so you can see roughly where the cut lands. Read it as an approximation of the shape, not a pixel-exact rendering of what Google will display.
Missing tags
A missing title is a genuine problem and worth fixing today. A missing description is a missed opportunity rather than a fault — Google will write one from your page content, and it may do so even when you have supplied one.
What to fix first
- Any page with no title tag. Nothing else on this list matters as much.
- Duplicate titles across pages. If two pages share a title, at least one of them is not saying what it is for.
- Titles that lead with your brand name. The distinguishing words belong at the front; the brand can go at the end where it is still visible if the snippet is cut.
- Descriptions that describe the company rather than the page. The reader is deciding whether this specific page answers their question.
- A canonical pointing somewhere unexpected. Rare, but when it is wrong it quietly removes the page from search.
Titles and descriptions are the last step of on-page work, not the first. If the underlying page does not answer the query well, a better title just gets you a click that bounces. The complete guide to SEO for UK businesses covers what sits underneath, and the heading structure analyser checks how the page itself is organised.
Frequently asked questions
- What length should a title tag be?
- This tool flags anything outside 30 to 60 characters. Under 30 usually means you have room you are not using; over 60 risks being cut short. Google truncates by pixel width rather than character count, so a title full of wide characters can be shortened before 60 and a narrow one can survive past it. Treat 60 as a practical ceiling, not a precise limit.
- What length should a meta description be?
- We flag anything outside 120 to 160 characters. The same pixel-width caveat applies. Worth knowing: Google often rewrites the description it shows anyway, choosing text from the page that better matches the query. A good description raises your odds of being used verbatim; it does not guarantee it.
- Does a meta description affect rankings?
- Not directly — Google has said for years that it is not a ranking factor. It affects whether someone clicks the result they can already see, which is why it is worth writing rather than leaving to chance.
- Does this check every page on my site?
- No. It fetches the one URL you give it. If you want every page checked, and the fixes written and published rather than listed, that is what the paid ClimbrIQ plan does.
- Why did the check fail on my URL?
- The tool requests the page as ClimbrIQBot and waits ten seconds. It reports a failure if the page returns an error status, redirects somewhere unreachable, times out, or blocks non-browser user agents. Pages behind a login or a bot challenge cannot be read.
- Do I need an account?
- No. The on-page result is free and needs no signup. Entering your email gets you a longer written report with three alternative titles, each written to stay under 60 characters, and three alternative descriptions.