What My Failed Experiment Can Teach You About Your Title Tags
For the past several months, I've been convinced that Google was using a fixed, pixel-width limit to decide where to cut off title tags in search results pages, replacing the contents with the dreaded ellipsis.
After finding a few hours to devote to researching my theory, I can tell you with absolute certainty that I was completely wrong.
It didn't take long to see a pattern emerging: Any title tag less than 70 characters long was never cut off. Any tag with more than 70 was missing the word which contained the 66th character.
Here are two perfect examples of title tags which demonstrate my point:
The title tag above spanned more pixels than any other fully displayed title that I could find.
This is the shortest title tag I could find that was cut off by Google. The last word displayed was “engine,” so that the listing actually looked like this:
The first title tag, displayed in full, takes up 553 pixels to display 69 characters. If the second title tag were displayed in full, it would take up 567 pixels to display 76 characters. So, while the second title tag may potentially violate a fixed pixel-width rule (If it were, say, 560 pixels) it is where Google cut it off that is the telling sign of a character-limit rule.
Look at the full title tag of the second example. If Google were using a pixel width instead of a character limit, it would have cut it off after the word “optimization” instead of “engine.” After all, it would have been fewer pixels wide (almost 50 fewer) and fewer characters (two characters fewer).
Instead, this website ends up with a 430-pixel-long, 54-character listing on a Google results page. Why?
Because Google relies on character counts, not pixel widths. Since the title tag is longer than 70 characters, it cut off the title tag at the word containing the 66th character, in this case, “optimization.”
Recommendations for crafting title tags:
- Stay under 70 characters
- Use the most competitive keywords you are targeting in the title tag
- Use your brand name in the title tag
- Tailor it to be read by a human, not a search engine
For more examples, or to learn more about the methodology of this research, please email Jesse
| Posted by benivolent @ seo company From benivolent on Nov 25th, 2009 | Excellent post with good example. Few days before I read in one article that 90 characters can use in title tag. After 90th character search engine takes it as secondary & gives less importance. Is it true??? |
| Posted by Jeremy Dearringer From Slingshot SEO, Inc. on Dec 1st, 2009 | Some suggest that Yahoo may value keywords in page title past 70 characters but I have not seen proof of this. Yahoo will soon be using Microsoft's new Bing technology so that won't matter anyway. Another reason that I would not create page titles longer than 70 characters is because of CTR (click through rates). If all else was equal would you rather click on a listing with a clean page title or one that ends in ... ? |
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