SERP Snippet Preview
See your result the way Google renders it, measured in pixels rather than characters, on desktop and mobile.
Desktop
Mobile
Nothing you type here is uploaded, stored or sent anywhere. It all runs in your browser.
Why pixels, not characters
Google truncates on rendered width, not character count. "Illinois" and "WWWWWWWW" are both eight characters and nowhere near the same width, which is why character-count tools give the wrong answer for title-case headlines and anything with capitals.
This measures your text on a canvas in the font and size Google uses, then compares it to the width the SERP allows. Those widths are approximations of a layout Google changes regularly — treat them as a guide, not a guarantee.
- Google rewrites titles anyway, roughly a third of the time, usually when yours is vague, stuffed, or does not match the query.
- Descriptions are not a ranking factor, but they decide clicks, and Google will substitute its own snippet if yours does not answer the query.
- Front-load the useful words. Whatever is at the end is what gets cut.
Questions people ask
Is click-through rate a ranking factor?
Not in the way the snippet-optimisation industry needs it to be. Google has consistently said clicks are too noisy and too easy to game to feed back into ranking directly. A better snippet gets you more of the traffic your position already earns, which is worth having on its own terms — it is not a lever that moves the position.
Why is Google showing a description I did not write?
Because yours did not answer the query as well as a sentence from your own page did. Google composes its own snippet for a large share of results, and it does it per query, which is something a single fixed description can never do. Rewrite yours only if the generated one is actively bad.
Should I write a shorter title for mobile?
You cannot — there is one title tag and two widths reading it. Write to the narrower one. If the desktop line then looks short, that is the correct trade: the version that survives truncation everywhere beats the version that reads perfectly on one device.
Where does the date in a result come from?
From several places at once: a visible date in the copy, datePublished in your structured data, sometimes the URL, sometimes the sitemap. Google reconciles them and there is no tag that suppresses the result. Making them agree is all the control you have.
Can I control the favicon and the sitelinks?
The favicon yes — it comes from a declared icon on your homepage and has its own size and format rules. Sitelinks no. They are generated from how Google understands your site structure, and the only way to influence them is to have a structure worth understanding.
Related tools
Snippet perfect, still on page two?
A good snippet earns clicks. Getting into the top ten is a different job.