Why it matters
Google cuts titles by width, not by character count: a title full of capital Ws runs out of room long before one of lower-case is and ls. Desktop results set titles in Arial at 20 pixels, with room for about 600 pixels, and descriptions in 14 pixel Arial with room for about 920.
This auditor measures every title and description in a crawl with Arial's own character widths, so the numbers don't depend on the fonts on your computer. It also groups duplicates across the site and flags missing, short and doubled tags, then lists each page with what to fix.
How to use it
- Crawl your site and export the HTML pages as CSV.
- Open the CSV or paste it in.
- Adjust the limits if you want.
- Fix the issues from the top down, and download the CSV to track them.
FAQ
How long should a title tag be?
About 600 pixels on desktop, which is roughly 50 to 60 characters. Pixel width is what counts, because wide letters use more room.
How long should a meta description be?
About 920 pixels on desktop, roughly 150 to 160 characters. Google often writes its own snippet anyway, so make the first part count.
Why are duplicate titles a problem?
They make pages look interchangeable, so Google may pick one and drop the others, or rewrite the titles itself.
Does this fetch my pages?
No. It reads a crawl export you already have, in your browser.
