How do I check and fix what my website actually shows up as in search and when shared?

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The title and description that show up in a Google search result, or the little preview card that appears when someone shares your link on social media or in a message, are two of the most-seen but least-checked parts of a website. They're what decides whether someone clicks through at all, and they're easy to get wrong by simply never thinking about them.

Check what you actually show right now

Don't guess, look. Search your own business name and your main service plus your city in Google, in an incognito window so your own search history doesn't skew the result, and read exactly what title and description show up. Separately, paste your homepage URL into a link-preview checker or just share it to yourself in a messaging app, to see what title, description and image show up in the shared-link card. These two checks take five minutes combined and tell you more than any amount of guessing.

Google Search Console, free and run directly by Google, gives you a more precise view: it shows exactly what title Google is currently indexing for each page, which is occasionally different from what you think you set, especially if a page was edited after the title was first indexed.

Can you actually edit these on a site builder?

This is genuinely worth testing before you commit to a paid plan on any AI site builder, not assuming. Wegic, an AI tool that builds a website from a chat description, includes a Site Audit and Optimize tool that flags SEO issues as part of its eight-area check and can apply AI-suggested fixes, which implies some level of title and description editing is possible, but whether you get direct, granular control over the exact title tag, meta description text, and page URL slug for each individual page wasn't something I could confirm with full certainty from available documentation. Before you pay for any plan specifically because you need SEO control, build a test page and try editing its title, description and URL directly to confirm the level of control you actually get, rather than assuming based on the feature's existence.

Step by step: fixing a bad title or description

1. Check your current title and description using the incognito-search method and a link-preview tool, as described above.
2. Write a specific, honest title for each important page: your business name, the specific service or location, not a generic "Welcome to our website." A title that states exactly what the page offers earns more clicks than a vague one, even if it ranks in the same position.
3. Write a description that gives someone a real reason to click, not a repeat of the title in slightly different words. A phone number, a specific offer, or a clear statement of what makes you different all work better than filler.
4. Check length isn't getting your text cut off. Titles and descriptions both get truncated past a certain length in search results, so review how they actually display, not just how they read in the editor.
5. Do this for every important page, not just the homepage. A service page with a generic title is just as much of a missed opportunity as a homepage with one.
6. Re-check after any major edit, since titles can sometimes revert to a default or placeholder value after a significant page rebuild, depending on how the underlying tool handles it.

A worked example: fixing five pages in one sitting

Say you check your site and find your homepage, services page, about page, contact page and one location page all showing some version of your business name followed by nothing distinctive. Working through them one at a time: the homepage title becomes your business name plus your main service and city, specific rather than generic. The services page gets its own title naming the actual services, not repeating the homepage's wording. The about page gets a title that signals credibility (years in business, certifications) rather than just "About Us." Each description gets a genuine reason to click: a phone number, a specific guarantee, a real detail. On a tool like Wegic, test one page's title and description edit first to confirm exactly how much control you have before committing an hour to rewriting all five, since the editing experience varies by platform and it's worth knowing what you're working with upfront.

Common mistakes worth checking for specifically

• Every page has the same title. If your homepage, services page and contact page all show the same generic business name with nothing distinguishing them, you're wasting a real opportunity to tell both Google and a searcher what each specific page is actually about.
• The description is missing entirely, which means a search engine pulls a random snippet of your page's actual text instead, often an awkward, out-of-context sentence that doesn't sell the click.
• A builder's default placeholder text never got replaced. This happens more often than owners expect, especially on pages added later that didn't get the same initial setup attention as the homepage. The wider build process is covered in launching a small business website with AI.
• The shared-link preview shows a broken or missing image, which is a separate setting from the title and description but equally damaging to click-through when someone shares your link socially.

What I'd actually tell you

This is a small, fast fix with a disproportionate payoff, since it affects every single click-through decision someone makes before they've even seen your actual page. Most owners who check this for the first time find at least one page with a genuinely bad or missing title or description, simply because nobody thought to look. For a wider look at what else might be off, see checking whether your website has SEO problems. Spend the twenty minutes checking every important page, not just the homepage, and you'll likely find something worth fixing.

When this isn't enough on its own

Fixing titles and descriptions improves your click-through rate on the traffic you already get; it doesn't create new traffic on its own. If the deeper problem is that your pages aren't ranking at all, fixing the title tag on a page nobody's finding won't move the needle. Confirm you're actually getting search impressions in Search Console before assuming a title rewrite is the priority fix.

How I'd approach this

When I build or review a site for a client, titles and descriptions get written deliberately for every important page, not left to a template default, because it's such a cheap fix relative to how much it affects whether someone actually clicks through. If your current site builder doesn't give you the direct control to fix this properly, that's a real limitation worth knowing about before you've invested further in the platform. Get in touch if you want this done right across your whole site.