Meta Tag Generator

About the Meta Tag Generator

What is a meta tag generator?

Meta tags sit in the head of a page and tell browsers and crawlers what the page is. A handful of them do real work. Most of the ones you will find in older generators do nothing at all, and have done nothing for over a decade. This tool writes the ones that count and tells you plainly when you are about to ship one that does not.

The other half of the job is length. Google does not cut titles at 60 characters, it cuts them at a pixel width, so a title full of capitals and Ws disappears sooner than one full of lowercase i and l. We measure your text in the same font Google renders it in and show you the width, then cut the preview exactly where the real result would be cut.

How to Use This Tool

1. Write the title and description. The counters track characters, and the badges under the preview track pixels, which is the measurement that actually decides truncation.
2. Watch the preview. Switch between desktop and mobile. The text is cut at the real pixel boundary, so what you see is what the result looks like.
3. Set the canonical URL. It has to be absolute. A relative one is quietly ignored by Google.
4. Build the robots line. Every directive is a toggle, and the sentence underneath translates the result into plain English before you commit it.
5. Copy or download. Output is HTML by default, or a Next.js metadata export if you are working in the App Router.

Example

With the default options (robots set to index and follow with a large image preview, Open Graph and X tags included), these page details will be converted to a ready to paste head block:

Title:  Sourdough Starter Guide
Description:  A week by week guide to
  building a starter that rises.
URL:  https://example.com/sourdough/
Image:  https://example.com/card.png

<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=
  device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title>Sourdough Starter Guide</title>
<meta name="description" content="A week
  by week guide…">
<meta name="robots" content="index,
  follow, max-snippet:-1,
  max-image-preview:large">
<link rel="canonical" href="https://
  example.com/sourdough/">

Add a social image and the same details also produce the og: and twitter: block underneath, so one form covers search and sharing together.

Which meta tags still do something

This is the part most generators get wrong. Google publishes the list of tags it reads, and it is short. Everything else is either a browser instruction or dead weight.

We still generate keywords and author if you fill them in, because plenty of internal search tools and CMS integrations read them. The tool just tells you what they are worth first.

Why the preview measures pixels

Ask five SEO tools how long a title can be and you will get five answers. That is because the honest answer is not a character count. Google truncates the title link to fit the width of the result, so the limit is a pixel width and your text either fits or it does not.

We measure the title in bold 20px Arial for desktop and 16px for mobile, and the description in 14px, which is what Google renders. The badges under the preview show the measured width against the point where truncation usually starts, around 561 pixels for a desktop title and 985 for a description. Those are the same thresholds Screaming Frog flags, and they are approximations rather than a published rule, which is exactly why we show the number instead of pretending there is a magic character count.

Building the robots line

The robots tag is where a small typo becomes an expensive mistake. noindex on the wrong template can empty a section out of the index. The toggles here compose the directives correctly and the sentence underneath reads the result back to you.

• max-snippet:-1 lets Google choose the snippet length. Setting 0 is the same as nosnippet.
• max-image-preview:large is what gets your image into rich results. The choices are none, standard and large, nothing else.
• max-video-preview:-1 allows a preview of any length, and 0 leaves a still image only.
• unavailable_after drops the page from results after a date, which suits an event or a job listing.
• indexifembedded only matters alongside noindex, for content pulled into another page through an iframe.

One trap worth naming. A page set to noindex cannot be a canonical target, so pairing the two sends mixed signals. The tool flags that combination when it sees it.

Common Use Cases

The head block is boilerplate right up until it is wrong. These are the jobs this tool gets used for most:

• Shipping a new page: get the title, description and canonical right before it goes live rather than after.
• Rewriting titles that Google replaced: if your title link is being rewritten, it is usually too long or too vague, and the pixel badge tells you which.
• Staging and test sites: build a correct noindex line so a staging copy never competes with production.
• Templates in a CMS: generate the pattern once, then drop your own variables into it.
• Auditing an old page: paste the current values in and see what is dead weight.

For the sharing side there are two companions. The Open Graph Generator goes deeper on the og: block and previews the card on Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, Discord and WhatsApp, and the X Card Generator covers the four card types and shows how X renders them today. Once you have the block, the HTML Validator will confirm it parses and the HTML Formatter will fit it to your indentation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where do meta tags go?

Inside the head element, before the closing head tag. They do nothing in the body. The charset declaration has one extra rule, it has to appear within the first 1024 bytes of the document, so keep it at the very top.

What is the ideal meta title length?

There is no character limit, only a width. Google truncates the title link to fit the result, which lands around 561 pixels on desktop. That is roughly 50 to 60 characters of ordinary text, but a title in capitals runs out of room far sooner. The badge under the preview gives you the actual width of what you typed.

Does Google use the keywords meta tag?

No. Google said publicly in 2009 that it does not use the keywords meta tag in ranking, and nothing has changed since. The field is here because some site search products and content systems still read it, not because it helps you rank.

What is the difference between noindex and nofollow?

noindex keeps the page out of search results. nofollow tells crawlers not to follow the links on it. They are independent, so you can use either alone. Setting both is the same as writing none.

What does max-image-preview:large actually do?

It permits Google to show a large image preview for the page, which is what most rich result treatments need. Without it you may get a thumbnail or nothing. The only accepted values are none, standard and large.

Why did Google rewrite my title?

Google builds the title link from several sources, including your title element, the main heading, and og:title. It rewrites when the title is too long, stuffed with keywords, or identical across many pages. Shortening it and making it describe the page specifically is usually enough to get yours back.

Do I still need a charset tag if my server sends the header?

Include it anyway. It costs one line, it makes the file correct on its own, and it protects you when the page is saved or served by something that drops the header. The value has to be utf-8, which is the only encoding valid in HTML5.

Should every page have its own description?

Yes, where it is worth writing one. Duplicated descriptions across a site are a wasted opportunity rather than a penalty, and Google will often ignore a generic one and write its own snippet from the page instead.

Is my data sent to a server?

No. The tags are generated by JavaScript in your browser, so the titles and URLs you type never leave your device. That matters when you are working on a page that has not launched yet.

Is this tool free?

Yes, completely free with no account and no limit on how many pages you generate tags for.