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
-
Google crawl drop
the crawl request of my company site: https://www.dhgate.com/ has dropped nearly over 95%, from daily 6463599 requests to 476493 requests at 12:00am on 9th, Oct (GMT+8). This dramatic dropping trend not only showed in our GSC crawl stats report but also our company's own log report. We have no idea what’s going on. We want to know whether there is an update of google about crawlling, or is this the issue of our own site? If something is wrong with our site, in what aspects would you recommend us to check, analyze and accordingly optimize?
Technical SEO | | DHgate_20140 -
SEO Title Length
Hi Everyone. I have a few pages being flagged with "Title Too Long". However, these are page 2, page 3, page 4, etc of category pages. They obviously have "| Page x of x" at the end of the title. Can these be ignored or is there a more SEO friendly way of handling this issue? Thanks. Michael
Technical SEO | | nomad_blogger0 -
H1 tag options
Hi, Working on a website and the developer has asked some questions about the h1 tag placement... So the main page has a bold heading named 'Overview' which then has a left hand navigation to tab through the content which appears next to the nav. The main content then has a heading and content below it. The 'Overview' heading appears on all pages of the left nav so really shouldn't be the H1 tag as it would cause duplication. One option we have thought about is to have the right hand heading above the content be the h1, and it has been suggested to stylize the 'Overview' heading but it won't actually be an h1. My question is would this have any negative impact on SEO? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | J_Sinclair0 -
Google is indexing my directories
I'm sure this has been asked before, but I was looking at all of Google's results for my site and I found dozens of results for directories such as: Index of /scouting/blog/wp-includes/js/swfupload/plugins Obviously I don't want those indexed. How do I prevent Google from indexing those? Also, it only seems to be doing it with Wordpress, not any of the directories on my main site. (We have a wordpress blog, which is only a portion of the site)
Technical SEO | | UnderRugSwept0 -
Google indexing tags help
Hey everyone, So yesterday someone pointed out to me that Google is indexing tags and that will likely hurt search engine results. I just did a "site:thetechblock.com" and I notice that tags are still being pulled. http://d.pr/i/WmE6 Today, I went into my Yoast settings and checked "noindex,follow" tags in the Taxomomies settings. I just want to make sure what I'm doing is right. http://d.pr/i/zmbd Thanks guys
Technical SEO | | ttb0 -
Google Indexing
Hi Everybody, I am having kind of an issue when it comes to the results Google is showing on my site. I have a multilingual site, which is main language is Catalan. But of course if I am looking results in Spanish (google.es) or in English (google.com) I want Google to show the results with the proper URL, title and descriptions. My brand is "Vallnord" so if you type this in Google you will be displayed the result in Catalan (Which is not optimized at all yet) but if you search "vallnord.com/es" only then you will be displayed the result in Spanish What do I have to do in order for Google to read this the way I want? Regards, Guido.
Technical SEO | | SilbertAd0 -
Optimum title and description meta tag length
Hi all, I have read that a title tag and description tag length of 69 and 156 characters respectively, should be used as this is all that Google will show in the search results, but that search engine robots will read longer titles and descriptions and additional characters will have an effect on ranking algorithms. However, is there any SEO benefit in making title and description tags longer to include more keywords to aid ranking, even though the latter part won't be visible in the results. I have read elsewhere on this forum that there may be concerns with regards to keyword dilution, but what about keyword reinforcement, i.e. by a repetition of the main keyword at the end of the title/description (I mean in a readable manner here, not 'stuffed')? Thanks in advance, Gareth
Technical SEO | | gdavies090319770 -
How do you add a description to the Meta Description area to Tag Pages in Wordpress? This way I do not get the errors: "Missing Meta Description Tag" from SEOMoz Bot? Thanks!
I tried to add descriptions to my tags in Wordpress (well actually one to test), but I still keep getting the "Missing Meta Description Tag" error. Any suggestions on how to fix this in Wordpress? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jhblogger0