The title tag is one of the most important SEO elements. It can have a huge impact on your ranking. In my experience, optimizing your title tags can give your rankings a big boost.
There are many different ways to approach optimizing a title tag. One is to make sure they fit within the 55-60 character limit (which I think is a bit outdated today). Other SEOs suggest that it’s okay to have title tags up to 70 characters.
There are also concerns that having your title truncated in search results or rewritten by Google can negatively impact your organic performance and click-through rate.
In this article, we’ll explore the basis of these concerns, Google’s official statement on title length, and my findings after manually looking at 645 title tags in Google’s SERPs.
Example of cut title tag in SERPs
Technically speaking, the number of characters in a title tag that Google can display in the SERPs is measured in pixels. When your title tag is too long, Google may cut it off like this.
Title tag update and consequences
In August 2021, Google released an update aimed at title tags. This update allows Google to display a different title to SERP users than the one available in the HTML title tag.
HTML title tags can be rewritten in the SERPs when they are:
too long Keyword stuffing. Repetitive language is missing or contains plain language (i.e. home pages could be called “Home”).
Once the update was released, it caused an uproar in the SEO community, as many SEOs have reported incidents where the title rewrite went “horribly wrong.”
Rob Woods reported an incident where the title tag was replaced by the URL slug:
shared this elsewhere. The query was “colored contacts” which appears in the title and H1. Instead of one of these, they are using the URL slug as the title of the snake. pic.twitter.com/eg9IVgCEyO
β Rob Woods π»π£ποΈ (@robdwoods) August 18, 2021
Chatter in the SEO community showed many examples of Google replacement
This has caused a bit of a panic in the SEO community. Many SEOs began doubling down on the importance of avoiding title rewrites by making sure their titles are short and within the character limit.
The confusion
It’s clear to everyone that Google wants shorter titles in the SERPs.
But does this mean they will use the titles displayed in the SERPs (which can be cut or rewritten) for ranking instead of the HTML title?
This has led many SEOs to assume that longer titles will be cut or rewritten, and Google will not consider them for rankings, but will instead consider the new title displayed in the SERPs for rankings.
What is Google’s official statement about title length?
In a Search for the Off the Record episodeGoogle’s John Mueller asked Gary Illyes about title tag length:
“I have a question that might just be a yes or no, Gary. Is there value in having title tags that are longer than the visible space and sections of it?”
To which Illyes gave a very clear and precise answer: “Yes.”
He added: “Title length, that’s an externally made metric… Technically, there’s a limit, like how long anything can be on the page, but it’s not a small number. It’s not 160 characters or whatever, 100, 200, 20 or whatever.”
And he recommended “Try to keep it accurate on the page, but I wouldn’t think too much about how long it is and whether it’s long enough or too long. If it fills the screen, it’s probably too long, but if just one sentence that fits into a or two lines, you won’t get a manual action for that.”
If we refer to Google documentation on SERP titles (also known as title links), there is no recommended length or character limit specified for the title tag.
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Would having longer titles affect rankings?
If longer title tags can be cut or rewritten in the SERPs, wouldn’t that affect rankings? Luckily, Lily Ray asked X this question and got this answer from Glenn Gabe.
Google has always explained that what you provide in the title tag is what is used (regardless of their systems dynamically changing the title in the SERPs). I’ve been checking and haven’t seen a ton of changes yet. Def. some (brand tags especially at the end), but nothing crazy.
β Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 18, 2021
This is in line with what Mueller told Google SEO Office Hours from December 11, 2020.
So if your titles are cut or rewritten in the SERPs, Google still uses the HTML title tag for ranking considerations, not the titles displayed in the SERPs.
I personally think we shouldn’t write shorter titles for this. The title tag is one of the few elements that affect rankings that we have control over. I always try to use them as much as possible, avoiding spammy practices like keyword stuffing.
My analysis
I want to put this argument to rest. Hopefully, as an industry, we stop recommending clients “shorten” their title tags because of this. There has been a title length metric circulating in almost every online resource and tool with nothing more than “we don’t want our titles cut or replaced” as evidence to support this recommendation.
I gathered a set of 100 URLs and analyzed the HTML and SERP titles of each of those URLs. For the selected URLs, I also had historical data for their SERP titles going back to 2022, which means we can also see how Google changed the way it displayed titles in the SERPs (interesting, right?)!
Here are my findings:
Google seems to prefer to display shorter titles. The longest title displayed in the SERPs in my sample of 100 URLs is 61 characters long. 27 URLs had their titles cut off. The HTML titles in these situations ranged from 59 to 117 characters. So does creating shorter titles ensure you don’t get cut in the SERPs? No! Here’s an example URL with a 59 character HTML title “Business to Business Advertising: Changing the Conversation” and this is how it looks in the SERPs, still truncated:
Another interesting observation is an instance where Google rewrote the title and decided to cut it. Yes, Google cut the title it created! The URL has an HTML title of “Small Business Marketing Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Grow” with 67 characters, and this is how it looks in the SERPs:
When comparing SERP titles in 2022 to SERP titles in 2024 for the same set of URLs (making sure their HTML title hasn’t changed), we see that out of 100 URLs, 33 had their titles SERP titles were change in a different way than the 2022. version. This means that Google can and will change SERP titles over time if necessary. The main difference noted is: Google removed the branding text added at the end of the title tag. This means that even if you add branded text at the end of the HTML title tag, Google may decide not to display it. The recommendation is not to count the brand text as part of your character limit, regardless of whether you want a shorter title. Overall, Google shortened SERP titles even further in 2024 compared to 2022. Here’s a sample of the changes seen:
On the other hand, in the sample of 100 URLs, there is an example where Google decided to add the brand name to the title in the SERPs, even though the brand name was not part of the title tag HTML. Of the 100 sample URLs, 29 are the same as the HTML title. Google seems consistent with de-branding title tags, even if the title tags are short. Here are examples of titles under 55 characters that have had their brand name removed from SERP titles:
Will writing shorter titles help you avoid title rewrites? No! Here is a list of example titles that were short and were still rewritten by Google in the SERPs:
The most common length of titles displayed in the SERPs in this sample is between 45 and 55 characters (see histogram below):
Here’s also how the title length will look in 2022 to give you an idea of ββthe changes that took place. You can see that the titles are shortened. (Note that the sample here was much larger for over 600 URLs)
Title tag duration in 2024
You don’t need to stick to a 55-60 character limit for your title tags. Your titles can – and should – be as long as is reasonable. Shorter titles guarantee you no additional benefit in terms of SEO:
Shorter titles can be rewritten. Shorter titles can still be cut. Shorter titles can still pull off your brand name.
Shortening title tags has no real value. Optimize them well and take advantage of all the real estate. Title tags are among the few assets that have a big impact on rankings that we still have some control over. We make the best of them.
The best advice I can give is to optimize your titles to rank first, even if you exceed the 60-70 character limit. Then experiment to adjust how your titles appear in the SERPs.
Also, if you decide to use a character limit, don’t count your brand text that’s attached to the end of your title as part of your character limit, as Google will likely ignore that part anyway.
If you don’t rank, it doesn’t matter how long your degrees are. So focus on optimizing your titles for ranking first, then evaluate how they look in the SERPs and adjust accordingly.
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.