length for the title taglength for the title tag

One of the most vital SEO components is the title tag. It might significantly affect how you rank. According to my observations, improving title tags can significantly improve rankings.

length for the title tag
length for the title tag

There are numerous approaches to title tag optimization. 

The first is making sure they stay within the allotted 55–60 characters. Nevertheless, some SEO experts advise having title tags that are up to 70 characters long.

There are also worries that having Google rewrite the title or truncate it in search results will harm organic performance. 

We’ll examine the reasons behind these worries, Google’s official position on title length, and my observations after manually inspecting 645 title tags on Page 1 of Google’s SERPs in this post.

An example of a title tag that has been cut off in search engine results

The maximum number of title tag characters that Google can show in SERPs is technically expressed in pixels. Google may truncate your title tag if it is too long.

SERP listing with a truncated title.

The revised title tag and its effects

Google released an update in August 2024 that focused on title tags. With this update, Google is now able to display a title to users in SERPs that differs from the one found in the HTML title tag. 

In SERPs, HTML title tags might be rewritten if they’re:

  • Too long.
  • full of keywords.
  • lacking or containing “boilerplate” language that is used repeatedly (home pages may be referred to as “Home”).

When the update was made public, it sparked a furor among SEOs because many of them had heard of instances in which the title rewrite had gone “horribly wrong.” John Mueller from Google even tweeted about it as a result of this:

In one instance, the URL slug was used in place of the title tag, according to Rob Woods:

slug used as SERP listing title

Many instances of Google replacing title tags in search results with alternative page elements, such as H1 tags, image alt texts, and image file names, were discussed in the SEO community. In some cases, the selected text wasn’t even present in the page’s source code. Google wants shorter titles to be displayed in SERPs, which is the most obvious takeaway from the title tag update.

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