The blue line people click: what your business looks like in a Google result
Type a kind of business into Google and look at what comes back. Each result is a small card. There is a blue line you click. Under it sit two lines of grey text. That card is the first thing a stranger sees of your business. Often it is the only thing.
Here is the part most owners do not know. Both lines came from your own website. Somebody wrote them, or nobody did. When nobody did, Google fills the gap with whatever it finds on the page. It might pick your menu. It might pick the word Home.
The blue line is your page title
Every web page has a title. It is a hidden line in the head of the page, the top part where the browser reads its settings. You cannot see it on the page itself. You can see it in two places: on the browser tab, and as the blue line in a search result.
Why care? Because the title is the exact moment a stranger is choosing. If it says Home, they learn nothing. If it says only your business name, they still do not know what you do or where you are. A title that says what you do, your town, and your name answers all three questions in one glance.
Our inspection engine, the program that reads a website and grades it, calls this check "Page title." It counts the characters, meaning every letter, space and mark. Between ten and seventy is our own guidance, not a Google rule. Shorter says too little. Longer risks a cut, and where Google cuts depends on the screen.
The grey text is your search description
Under the blue line sits the description. It is another hidden line in the page head, one or two plain sentences about the page. Google shows it under your title. That is the space where you get to say why someone should click.
When there is no description, Google writes one for you. It pulls words from wherever it likes on the page. Owners are often surprised by what it picks. The engine calls this check "Search description." It wants between fifty and one hundred and seventy characters. That is our range, not a Google limit. Google publishes none, and may rewrite yours anyway.
What we measured
There are 78,807 websites in our count so far. Chains, addresses that no longer lead to the business, and sites outside the United States are left out.
One of every hundred has no page title at all. Twenty-seven of every hundred have no search description at all. A title or description with the wrong length, or a placeholder word like Home, is logged as a warning instead. Those are not in these two numbers.
| Check | Usable length | Missing | The engine's fix note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Page title | 10 to 70 characters | 975 sites | Write one honest sentence naming what you do and where, sized for a search result. Minutes per page. |
| Search description | 50 to 170 characters | 21,201 sites | Two plain sentences about the page, written for a human skimming Google. Minutes per page. |
Write yours here
Fill in the three boxes and the page builds a title the way a good one reads: what you do, then your town, then your name. Add a description in the last box. The page shows both inside a plain copy of a search result, with a meter under each one set to the engine's own ranges. Nothing you type is saved anywhere. It lives on this page and is gone when you leave.
The example already filled in is made up. Sunny Paws is not a real business. Replace it with yours.
How it would look in a search result. A made-up example, not a real listing.
A usable length, by the engine's own range.
A usable length, by the engine's own range.
The two small marks on each bar are the engine's low and high limits. Green means the length sits between them.
Two things to check in the copy above. Can a stranger tell what you do from the blue line alone? Does the grey text give them a reason to click? If either answer is no, rewrite until it is yes. Then hand both lines to whoever looks after your site. Use the word title and the word description, so they know where each one goes.
How to know what Google sees today
The copy above shows what you wrote. It cannot show what your site has right now. The free inspection can. In a few seconds it reads your site as it is today, prints your title with its length, and prints how long your description is or says there is none. Then it prints the same fix notes as above, to hand on.