tooldura

Google renders search results in a fixed-width container and cuts anything that overflows, appending an ellipsis. The container has been roughly stable for years.

For titles, the desktop limit is about 580 to 600 pixels, rendered in a 20px font. That works out to roughly 55 to 60 characters of average English text. On mobile the container is narrower but the font is smaller, so the effective character count lands in a similar range.

For descriptions, desktop allows about 920 pixels across two lines, or roughly 155 to 160 characters. Mobile often shows three lines, so descriptions can run slightly longer there, which is why the same snippet sometimes appears truncated on one device and complete on another.

The practical consequence is that character counts are a proxy, and the proxy fails at the extremes. A title in title case with several capitals, or one containing a wide brand name, can truncate at 52 characters. A lowercase title of narrow letters can survive past 65.

Studies over recent years consistently find that Google replaces the supplied meta description on somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of results. That number surprises people who spend real effort writing them.

The rewriting is not arbitrary. Google substitutes text from the page when it judges that a passage answers the specific query better than the generic description does. A page about three topics gets a different snippet for each of them, drawn from the relevant section.

This has two implications worth acting on. First, the meta description is still worth writing, because it is what appears for brand and navigational queries where no page passage is more relevant. Second, and more importantly, the body content needs to contain clear, quotable sentences that directly answer likely queries, because those sentences are what Google will promote into the snippet.

Titles are rewritten far less often, roughly a third of the time, usually when the title is keyword-stuffed, identical across many pages, or missing entirely. A specific, human title is usually kept.

Keyword stuffing the title. "Word Counter | Free Word Counter Tool | Count Words Online Free" reads as spam to people and triggers a rewrite from Google. One clear phrasing beats three variations.

Leaving the description empty. Google will generate one, and its choice is often the first paragraph of boilerplate on the page. Writing something specific gives you control over the majority of cases where it is used.

Writing the description as a summary. "This page discusses various aspects of word counting" tells a searcher nothing they did not know from the title. Tell them what they will get.

Ignoring the pixel reality on brand-heavy titles. A title ending in a long brand name will truncate on the brand rather than the topic, which is the correct trade, but only if the topic comes first.

Forgetting that titles differ by surface. The title tag governs search results, Open Graph governs social cards, and the H1 governs the page itself. They can and often should differ, because the reader's context differs.