# Meta Tags Checker > A meta tags checker fetches a page and reports the tags search engines actually read - title, meta description, canonical, meta robots and the heading hierarchy. Paste a URL and you get the exact character counts, the canonical target and every missing or duplicated tag, without installing anything. Source: https://rankcert.com/tools/meta-tags-checker Free, no signup. Updated: 2026-08-29 ## How to use it 1. Paste the full https:// URL of the page you want to check. 2. We fetch the page once and read its exactly as a crawler would. 3. Review the title, description, canonical and heading report, then fix the flagged issues. ## Questions ### How long should a title tag be? Google truncates around 60 characters on desktop and roughly 50 on mobile. Under 60 keeps the whole title visible; under 20 usually means you are wasting the strongest ranking signal on the page. ### How long should a meta description be? Aim for 120 to 160 characters. Google rewrites descriptions about 70% of the time anyway, but a clear one still wins clicks when it is used. ### Does a missing canonical hurt rankings? It can. Without a canonical, the same content reachable at /page, /page?utm_source=x and /page/ competes with itself and splits its own link signals. ### Do you store the pages you check? We cache the result for an hour so repeat checks of the same URL do not re-fetch the site. We never store the page body. ### Which meta tags still matter in 2026? Title, meta description, canonical, meta robots and viewport. Everything else is either ignored (keywords, author, revisit-after) or handled better elsewhere. Open Graph tags matter for sharing, not for ranking. ### Does the meta keywords tag do anything? No. Google stopped using it in 2009 and Bing treats it as a spam signal. If a page still has one, delete it. ### Why does Google show a different title than mine? Google rewrites titles roughly a third of the time, usually when the title is truncated, keyword-stuffed, or does not match the query. A concise title under 60 characters that matches the H1 is rewritten least often. ### Should the title and H1 be identical? They should say the same thing but need not match word for word. The title competes for the click in the results page; the H1 confirms the topic once the visitor lands. Keep both about the same subject or you send a mixed signal. ## Related tools - [Open Graph Preview](https://rankcert.com/tools/open-graph-preview): Preview how your page looks when shared on X, LinkedIn, Slack and Facebook, and find the Open Graph tags you are missing. - [SEO Checker](https://rankcert.com/tools/seo-checker): Run eleven on-page checks against any URL: title, description, canonical, headings, alt text, Open Graph, word count and indexability, with the exact fixes. - [Redirect Checker](https://rankcert.com/tools/redirect-checker): Follow every hop a URL takes, see the status code at each step, and find the chains, loops and temporary redirects that leak link equity. - [Broken Link Checker](https://rankcert.com/tools/broken-link-checker): Crawl any page for broken links, see the status code behind every dead URL, and separate the internal ones that cost you link equity from the external rot. - [Backlink Verifier](https://rankcert.com/tools/backlink-verifier): Check whether a page really links to your domain, what rel attribute the link carries, and whether the page is indexable at all. - [Outbound Link Checker](https://rankcert.com/tools/outbound-link-checker): List every external link on a page with its rel attribute, count how many pass equity, and catch affiliate links that should be marked sponsored.