SERP snippet preview

What a snippet is

The snippet is your listing in Google: the address, the blue title link and a line or two of text underneath. The title usually comes from your <title> tag and the text often from your meta description. It is the whole of your pitch on a results page, so it is worth seeing before anyone else does.

How the preview is measured

Google's documentation says there is no limit on how long a title can be, but that the title link "is truncated in Google Search results as needed, typically to fit the device width" (Google: title links). So the title is measured by width, not by counting letters: a title in capitals is much wider than one in lower case. We cut it where our audit's long-title check does, at about 600 pixels in Google's desktop font. Google publishes no width for descriptions; we cut them at about 160 characters on a computer and 120 on a phone, the figures the audit uses.

What good looks like

• Say what the page offers, first. Anything past the cut is never read, so the brand name belongs at the end.
• A description that earns the click. It is not a ranking factor. It is the sentence that decides whether somebody chooses you.
• Expect Google to rewrite sometimes. Google lists the sources it may use instead of your title, including the page's main heading and its og:title. A clear, accurate title is rewritten least.

Next: check every tag in the head, or see how the page looks when shared.