Google Ads gives responsive search ads up to 15 headlines of 30 characters, four descriptions of 90 characters, and two display paths of 15. Performance Max adds five 90-character long headlines, a 60-character short description, and a 25-character business name. Sitelinks get 25/35/35; callouts and structured snippets get 25. Spaces count.
Every text field in Google Ads has a hard character cap, the interface enforces it, and finding the numbers usually means clicking through three separate help pages. Here they all are in three tables — plus the working rules that matter more than the caps themselves, like why 90 characters isn't really 90 once ad customizers get involved.
Responsive search ad character limits
| Field | Maximum per ad | Character limit |
|---|
| Headline | 15 | 30 |
| Description | 4 | 90 |
| Display path | 2 | 15 |
A responsive search ad (RSA) serves up to three of your headlines and up to two of your descriptions at a time, assembled by Google from the pool you provide. The display paths are the two optional slugs shown after your domain in the displayed URL — example.com/Pricing/Teams — and they're cosmetic: they set expectations about the landing page without having to match its actual path.
Performance Max text asset limits
| Asset | Maximum count | Character limit |
|---|
| Headline | 15 | 30 |
| Long headline | 5 | 90 |
| Short description | 1 | 60 |
| Description | 4 | 90 |
| Business name | 1 | 25 |
Performance Max reuses your text across Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and Maps, which is why it wants both a 60-character short description for tight placements and 90-character descriptions for roomier ones. Write the long headline as an actual sentence with a subject and a verb — it appears where there's space for one, and a stretched-out 30-character headline reads thin at 90.
Sitelink, callout, and structured snippet limits
| Asset | Field | Character limit |
|---|
| Sitelink | Link text | 25 |
| Sitelink | Description line 1 | 35 |
| Sitelink | Description line 2 | 35 |
| Callout | Callout text | 25 |
| Structured snippet | Each value | 25 |
Sitelink descriptions are optional, but filling both 35-character lines gives Google the option of showing the larger sitelink format instead of bare links. Callouts are non-clickable proof points ("Free returns," "24/7 support"), and structured snippet values hang off a header you pick from Google's fixed list — every value trimmed to 25 characters.
The limits are maximums, not targets
Nothing rewards hitting exactly 30 or exactly 90. "Free returns" is a complete callout at 12 characters; stretching it to "Free returns on all orders" adds characters, not information. The cap is a ceiling to stay under, not a box to fill — write the message, check the count, stop. Where extra room genuinely helps is descriptions, because concrete detail takes space: a price, a timeframe, a guarantee. Filler never earns its characters; specifics usually do.
Headlines run the other way: at 30 characters, most advertisers run out of room before they run out of message. When a headline won't fit, cut modifiers before nouns, prefer digits to spelled-out numbers ("2-day" saves six characters over "two-day"), and let ampersands earn their keep. What you shouldn't cut is the specific — "Ships in 2 days" trimmed to "Fast shipping" fits more easily and says less.
Every RSA asset must stand alone
Google assembles a responsive search ad fresh for each auction — any of your headlines can serve first, next to any other two, above either description. That breaks sequential writing instantly: if headline 7 reads "...And That's Not All," some real impression will open with it.
So the rules are strict. Every headline has to work on its own and beside any two others. No description may continue a headline's sentence. No asset gets to depend on another for context. And variety matters for the same reason — fifteen rephrasings of one benefit give the system nothing to test, while distinct angles (price, speed, proof, guarantee) let winning combinations emerge. The quick check: shuffle any three headlines and read them as a unit. If some ordering embarrasses you, rewrite it now, because Google will find that ordering eventually.
Write descriptions to 85 characters, not 90
If you use ad customizers — countdown timers, location insertion, keyword insertion — text gets swapped in at serve time, and the inserted text can run longer than the placeholder you typed. Leave about five characters of headroom in every 90-character description so an insertion doesn't collide with the cap. The same logic protects 30-character headlines that use keyword insertion, where your fallback text has to fit no matter what the search query looked like. Writing to 85 costs you nothing on the days the insert runs short and saves the asset on the days it doesn't.
Pinning shrinks your combinations
Pinning locks an asset to a position — headline 1, say — and once anything is pinned there, only pinned assets can serve in that slot. Pin one headline to position 1 and every impression now leads with it. Pin a description too and your "responsive" ad is most of the way back to being a static one, with a fraction of the combinations left to test. Sometimes that's the right call: regulated industries pin required disclaimers because they have to. If it isn't compliance, pin reluctantly, one slot at a time, and check whether performance actually improved.
The common compromise is pinning several interchangeable headlines to the same position — position 1 can rotate among three pinned options, which keeps some testing alive while guaranteeing the slot always carries the brand or the offer. Still a constraint, but a far looser one than a single locked line.
Specific beats clever
Tight caps push every advertiser toward the same compressed superlatives — Top Quality, Great Prices, Best Service — which is exactly why numbers stand out in the results page's wall of sameness. A price ("From $12/mo"), a timeframe ("Ships in 2 days"), a count ("2,400+ reviews") each hand the reader something checkable in well under 30 characters. Vague praise costs the same characters and says nothing anyone believes. When a claim and a number both fit, run the number.
Mobile truncation still happens
Fitting the cap doesn't guarantee full display. On narrow screens, a second description often doesn't make the cut at all, and even a served description can trail off early. Front-load accordingly: offer and call to action in the first half of every description, supporting detail in the back half, nothing essential saved for the closing words. Write each asset as if it might be the only one that shows — on some impressions, it will be.
Before anything goes live, read every asset on its own and ask whether it would survive as the entire ad. The preview panel helps, but it shows assembled combinations, not the truncated single-asset worst case — that one you have to imagine, and write for, yourself.
How Google counts characters
Spaces count. Punctuation counts. "Save 20% today!" spends 15 characters, not 12. And in languages written with double-width characters — Chinese, Japanese, and Korean — each double-width character counts as two, so a 30-character headline holds 15 of them and a 90-character description holds 45. Half-width characters mixed into the same text, like Latin letters and digits, still count as one apiece.
Count before you paste. Dropping your draft lines into a character counter catches over-limit text in one pass, which beats trimming inside the ads editor one red warning at a time. And if you're drafting description variants from scratch, a Google Ads description generator produces options already sized under 90 — trim toward 85 wherever customizers are in play.
Writing to hard caps is a transferable skill: the same discipline applies to organic snippets, where the cutoffs are looser but the stakes are similar — see the meta title and description length guide — and to social posts, where every platform draws its own lines: the social media character limits guide has the full map.
