Title tag too long

Google truncates titles at roughly 600 pixels wide in the SERP — about 50–60 characters for typical Latin script, fewer for wide characters. When truncated, the cut shows as … and everything after disappears, including your brand name and any CTA-style ending.

The fix isn’t to ban long titles. It’s to make sure the truncation point lands somewhere safe.

The actual constraint

Google measures pixel width, not character count. Some letters are wider:

• M, W, m, w are ~16 pixels each
• i, l, t are ~5–7 pixels each
• A title made of narrow characters can run 70+ characters before truncating
• A title of wide characters truncates by 45

Practical guideline: target 50–55 characters and you’ll be safe across most fonts and devices. Mobile truncates slightly shorter than desktop.

How to detect it

curl -s https://example.com/some/page \
  | grep -oE '<title>[^<]*</title>' \
  | sed -E 's/<\/?title>//g' \
  | awk '{ print length, $0 }'

Anything over 60 characters is at risk. Use Google’s mobile SERP previewer or any free title-pixel-width calculator to verify per-title.

In Google Search Console, click into a query in the Performance report — if the title shown in the example SERP doesn’t match what you wrote, Google rewrote it. Truncation is one reason; over-stuffing is another.

How to write a title that survives

Three rules:

1. Lead with the unique keyword. The first 30 characters carry the most weight and are guaranteed to render. Project management for engineering teams puts the topic first; Acme — The leading project management platform for… truncates before the topic appears.
2. Brand last, brand short. … — Acme is six characters. … | Acme: The All-in-One Platform for Project Management is fifty wasted characters.
3. Drop filler. “The Best”, “The Leading”, “The Ultimate”, “Top 10 in 2026” — all rewriteable. Try the title without them.

Before / after:

• Before: The Ultimate Guide to Project Management Software for Engineering Teams in 2026 | Acme Software Inc. (104 chars)
• After: Project management for engineering teams — Acme (47 chars)

The fix

Universal HTML

<title>Project management for engineering teams — Acme</title>

WordPress (Yoast / Rank Math)

Both plugins show a real-time pixel-width indicator in the post editor. Use it. Set the title manually for any post where the auto-generated version runs long.

To enforce a sitewide template that produces short titles:

• Yoast → Search Appearance → Content types → %%title%% — %%sitename%%
• Rank Math → Titles & Meta → Posts → %title% — %sitename%

Avoid templates that include %%date%%, %%category%%, or “Page %%pagenumber%%” by default — they push the unique keyword off the visible edge.

Shopify

Edit Online Store → Pages → SEO → Page title per page. For products and collections, Shopify auto-generates from product name + store name. Override per-product when the default runs long.

Next.js (App Router)

The template feature in metadata API is great for sitewide structure, dangerous for total length:

// app/layout.tsx
export const metadata: Metadata = {
  title: {
    default: "Acme",
    template: "%s — Acme", // child pages get "Their Title — Acme"
  },
};

If your brand is 20 characters and you put it at the start of every template, you waste 20 characters before the unique part. Use a short separator and a short brand suffix.

Pitfalls

Don’t pad to hit a target length. A clear 35-character title is better than a stuffed 55-character one. Google may rewrite the stuffed version.

Don’t include words that don’t matter to search intent. “Welcome to”, “Homepage of”, “Click here for” — all dead weight.

Don’t write different titles for the same content. A title that changes between visits (because it includes a date, a price, or a real-time value) confuses Google’s clustering. Keep it stable across crawls.

Don’t use emoji in titles unless you know they’ll render. Most do, some get stripped. Test in the SERP, not just in your local browser tab.

Don’t assume desktop and mobile truncate at the same point. Mobile truncates earlier. Test mobile first.

Fix at the edge with Serpwise

When over-long titles come from a CMS template — every product page emitting [Product Name] - Buy Online | Free Shipping Over $50 | Acme Store — the source fix is upstream and slow.

Serpwise can rewrite <title> at the edge based on URL patterns: strip a brand suffix sitewide, truncate at a smart boundary, replace a verbose template with a concise one. The rewrites are visible in one dashboard; the upstream cleanup happens on its own schedule.

See pricing or run a free AI visibility audit.