Meta title length checker
Meta title length checker
Count a page title in characters, words and bytes, and see where it would be cut at the limit you set — with the limit left editable, because a search engine truncates on rendered width rather than on a character count.
How this is calculated
Characters are counted as Unicode code points, words on whitespace, and bytes as the UTF-8 encoding of the same string. The preview is the first N characters with an ellipsis appended when the string is longer.
- A title is clipped by rendered width, not by length. Capital letters, wide glyphs and a long site name all consume pixels faster than lowercase text, so two titles of identical character count can be treated differently. The cut here is a planning aid and cannot predict what a particular result page will show.
- Bytes matter separately from characters wherever a limit is stated in bytes: a Devanagari or Tamil character costs three bytes in UTF-8 where an ASCII letter costs one. A title that reads as short can still be long in storage.
- An empty title, a title identical to another page, or one that is only the site name are all problems this count will not catch. Check those against the rest of the site rather than against a number.
A title tag is the one piece of copy on a page that a reader meets before they meet the page. It is worth measuring, but the measurement people quote — sixty characters — is a planning convention rather than a rule any search engine publishes.
Why the cut is in pixels and the count is in characters
A result title is clipped to the width available in the result block. That width is fixed; the characters are not. Ten capital Ws consume far more of it than ten lowercase is, so two titles with identical character counts can be treated differently on the same page of results. A character limit is a proxy for a pixel budget, and a useful one, but it is a proxy.
This is why the limit here is a field you can change rather than a verdict the tool hands down. Set it to the figure your team plans with, read the preview as an approximation, and put the words that matter at the front so that a cut anywhere still leaves a sentence that means something.
Bytes, characters and the scripts that separate them
Where a limit is stated in bytes rather than characters, the script you write in changes the answer. An ASCII letter is one byte in UTF-8; a Devanagari, Tamil or Bengali character is typically three. A headline that reads as comfortably short can be long in storage, and a CMS that validates on bytes will reject what a character counter waved through.
Both counts are printed for that reason. Neither one catches the failures that actually cost clicks: a title duplicated across forty pages, a title that is only the site name, or a title that describes the page accurately and says nothing a reader wants. Those are editorial problems and no counter will find them.
Questions readers ask
Should the site name go in every title?
It is a convention, not a requirement, and it costs characters on every page. On a home page the name is the title; deep in a site it is often redundant, because the result already shows the domain above the title. Where a CMS appends it automatically, include it in what you paste here so the count reflects what a reader sees.
The tool says I am within the limit but my title is still cut. Why?
Because the limit is characters and the cut is pixels. Wide glyphs, capitals and a long site name all spend the budget faster. Move the important words earlier and shorten the tail rather than trusting the count.
More in Titles, snippets and canonicals
SEO and website tools
Titles and snippets measured, copy counted and scored, and the markup a page needs built in the browser and copied out.
- Meta title length checker Count a page title in characters, words and bytes, and see where it would be cut at the limit you set — with the limit left editable, because a search engine truncates on rendered width rather than on a character count.
- Meta description length checker Measure a description against the desktop and mobile limits you set, count its characters and bytes, and see the text a reader would actually be shown.
- Search snippet preview See a title, URL and description assembled the way a search result stacks them, with the breadcrumb your URL implies and the cuts applied at limits you choose.
- Canonical tag builder and checker Check the form of a canonical URL against the page it is meant to describe, and build the link element — without fetching either page, so nothing you type leaves the browser.