Google is shortening many of my title tags although they are already quite concise
-
Hi,
Title tags of our website are being truncated by Google even though they can be very short (sometimes < 40 characters) and with very few capital letters. We would like to understand why. Example:
Principal component analysis (pca) in abcde - OurBrand
shows up as:
Principal component analysis (pca) in abcd... - OurBrand
where abcde is the name of a very common software (5 characters), and OurBrand is a 6 characters long string (could be used in either lower case or upper case).
Even when removing the brackets around pca, truncation still occurs...
Any clue why?
-
Thanks Eric,
My title tags are already super-short (sometimes less than 40-45 characters and far less than 487 pixels) but are still truncated by Google as I showed you in my example...
-
Thanks for your answer EGOL. Yep, Google can get so mysterious sometimes.
JP
-
When it comes to title tags, Google will truncate and even change certain title tags, and that depends on several factors. One of those factors is the actual search query used. When it comes to title tag length, keep in mind that there are two things that can influence whether or not it gets truncated or not: number of characters used and number of pixels used. If the title tag is over 65 characters or over 487 pixels it will get truncated.
Take a look at your title tags to see if this is the case. If it is, then you'll just need to use a shorter title tag.
-
We would like to understand why.
I doubt that anyone outside of Google has a good answer for this. For some reason, Google thinks that your page is better promoted to the searcher with the short title.
Sometimes I debate with myself if one of my articles should have a one word title such as "widgets". But, I usually go with a longer (but still simple and easily read) title that I believe will elicit clicks. I used to think that Google was stinking up my clever marketing when they shortened my title. However, now I think that I am a 70-year-old white guy who has lived in rural places all of my life and I have no idea what would appeal to younger people in different parts of the world. So, if Google wants to shorten my title tag the results will probably be good.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
About how google works
Hey guyz,
Technical SEO | | atakala
I want to ask a basic question. If I search for Larry Page lets say.
I think google look for it's index for word larry and page distinct.
And mix it up. But the question ;
Can google show a result which only Larry exist on the page but any of the synonym or the stem of the Page not exist .
If it can happen how this page can be showned in larry page query. Thank you.0 -
"Standout" tag and "Original content" tags - what's the latest?
In November 2010 Google introduced the "standout tag" http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=191283 I can't find any articles/blog posts/etc in google after that date, but its use was suggested in a google forum today to help with original content issues. Has anyone used them? Does anyone know what's the latest with them? Are they worth trying for SEO? Is there a possible SEO penalty for using them? Thanks, Jean
Technical SEO | | JeanYates0 -
Canonical Tag Here?
Hello, I have a client who I have taken on (different to my other client in another question), My client has a ecommerce website and in nearly all of his products (around 30-40) he has a little information checklist like.. Made in the UK
Technical SEO | | Prestige-SEO
Prices from 9.99
Top quality
Free delivery on orders over.. This is the duplicate content, what is the best practise for this as the SEOmoz crawler is giving me a multiple of errors.0 -
Remove Site from Google
How can I get my website out of google? I want all pages completely gone. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
Google Penalty?
Hi, I have recently been asked to help www.mycanvas.ie I have a feeling they have a google penalty. All their Google Keywords have literally dropped out of the Google SERP but they are still shown on Yahoo SERP. I recently did a site:www.mycanvas.ie and the pages are still in google index. The only thing that comes to mind is that the site owner submitted to 380 web directories over a period of 2 months with http://www.directorymaximizer.com/ do you think this could be causing the problem with google? Advise and suggestions are welcomed, thank you.
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0 -
Joomla problem, title tag too long
Another problem SEOMOZ reported is that my title tags are too long. However, when I type in the title and the description for a particular page on Joomla, the description later appears not only as the meta description, but as part of the page title as well, thus the title appears to be too long. I have no idea how to seperate those two. Anyone?
Technical SEO | | polyniki0 -
Many items with similar descriptions showing up as duplicate page titles
Hi, We are just a small company trying to understand this seo business. :O) I hope you will give us your input on how we look and how we can improve. www.bakerbay.com Each week I go down the seomoz crawl and change the duplicate page titles it increases the duplicate page content. Then the next week it seems to find other titles that have been fixed that are afluwie now. Please help. We are a bead company and alot of our products have a similar description but have different colors and items numbers. Could you please advise me on how to fix these errors and increase our ranking? All the Best, Beth
Technical SEO | | BakerBayBeadCo0 -
Should I use a "-", ":", or "|" in the title tag?
Out of habit, I've always put a "-" or dash to separate items in the title tag. However, I've noticed that more and more sites are using either a ":" or "|" in the title. Is there one that is better to use than the other?
Technical SEO | | beeneeb0