Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
New (google) local SERPs has 40 character limit on title length
-
Should i change my all the page titles for pages that show up in local SERPs to reflect this new limit? Is there any benefit to leaving it at the old limit and having more keywords in there? Or would there be benefit to conforming to google's new standard and having shorter titles?
-
I think you misunderstood me on "staying true to the page title"
If your website is about selling blue widgets and you page title is "blue widgets - johns widget corp" then you are "staying true to the page title" You are letting people and search engines know that this page is about blue widgets. Also "blue widgets - johns widget corp" is under 40 characters so this would not be the best example.
Your question was if you should change all your page titles to under 40 characters so that your entire page title would show. My answer / advise to you is; if you need more then 40 characters to properly describe your page then you should not change just so that all characters in your page title show.
-
I don't think you should change all the page titles on your site to 40 characters or less just to conform to Google's new local SERPs.
The 40 character limit is what Google will show not what you are limited to use. The best advice I can give you is to be "true" to your page titles. If you need more then 40 characters to properly let search engines and people know what your pages are about then you should. Just don't add (stuff) an extra list of keywords to the end of your page titles.
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 serp pagination issue
We are a local real estate company and have landing pages for different communities and cities around our area that display the most recent listings. For example: www.mysite.com/wa/tumwater is our landing page for the city of Tumwater homes for sale. Google has indexed most of our landing pages, but for whatever reason they are displaying either page 2, 3, 4 etc... instead of page 1. Our Roy, WA landing page is another example. www.mysite.com/wa/roy has recently been showing up on page 1 of Google for "Roy WA homes for sale", but now we are much further down and www.mysite.com/wa/roy?start=80 (page 5) is the only page in the serps. (coincidentally we no longer have 5 pages worth of listings for this city, so this link now redirects to www.mysite.com/wa/roy.) We haven't made any major recent changes to the site. Any help would be much appreciated! *You can see what my site is in the attached image... I just don't want this post to show up when someone google's the actual name of the business 🙂 nTTrSMx.jpg C4mhfgh.jpg
Technical SEO | | summithomes0 -
Google displays multiple titles for same article. What does this mean?
I've linked to some screenshots so that it what I'm talking about makes more sense. Sometimes, when I perform a search, I see an article with the correct article title listed as the page title in the SERPs. Other times, I see the wrong page title – it's a generic somethin' or other done by my client's web design company with a bunch of keywords thrown in. The latter (not the correct article title) also appears at the top of the browser tab for every article on my client's site. I know this is bad, but what can be done about it? This would never happen if my client used Wordpress or some easily modifiable CMS, but they're using a proprietary one maintained by the group that designed the website. open?id=0BxB_dYL1ylGgVVF1dHlwdXp2dFU open?id=0BxB_dYL1ylGgdWJjdlJoRlRIR00
Technical SEO | | Greenery0 -
How to show number of products in your Google SERP?
I have used to rich snippet to my website & everything is working fine except showing the total number of products listed in the particular category. Check out the screenshot below: aH7XM
Technical SEO | | promodirect0 -
Vanity URLs are being indexed in Google
We are currently using vanity URLs to track offline marketing, the vanity URL is structured as www.clientdomain.com/publication, this URL then is 302 redirected to the actual URL on the website not a custom landing page. The resulting redirected URL looks like: www.clientdomain.com/xyzpage?utm_source=print&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=printcampaign. We have started to notice that some of the vanity URLs are being indexed in Google search. To prevent this from happening should we be using a 301 redirect instead of a 302 and will the Google index ignore the utm parameters in the URL that is being 301 redirect to? If not, any suggestions on how to handle? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | seogirl221 -
Where did the "Location" go, on Google SERP?
In order to emulate different locations, I've always done a Google query, then used the "Location" button under "Search Tools" at the top of the SERP to define my preferred location. It seems to have disappeared in the past few days? Anyone know where it went, or if it's gone forever? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | measurableROI0 -
Special Characters in Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
Do special characters, such as the "&" symbol or a "," in title tags and meta descriptions negatively affect your ranking in search engines? Any feedback is much appreciated. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | ZAG1 -
Google truncating or altering meta title - affect rankings?
I have a site that the title tag is too long and the title is simply the name of the site (I think they get it from ODP, not sure) Anyway, the rankings for the home page have dropped quite a bit. I'm wondering if the change that Google makes affects rankings (i.e. name of site doesn't have all the keywords).
Technical SEO | | santiago230 -
Why "title missing or empty" when title tag exists?
Greetings! On Dec 1, 2011 in a SEOMoz campaign, two crawl metrics shot up from zero (Nov 17, Nov 24). "Title missing or empty" was 9,676. "Duplicate page content" was 9,678. Whoa! Content at site has not changed. I checked a sample of web pages and each seems to have a proper TITLE tag. Page content differs as well -- albeit we list electronic part numbers of hard-to-find parts, which look similar. I found a similar post http://www.seomoz.org/q/why-crawl-error-title-missing-or-empty-when-there-is-already-title-and-meta-desciption-in-place . In answer, Sha ran Screaming Frog crawler. I ran Frog crawler on a few hundred pages. Titles were found and hash codes were unique. Hmmm. Site with errors is http://electronics1.usbid.com Small sample of pages with errors: electronics1.usbid.com/catalog_10.html
Technical SEO | | groovykarma
electronics1.usbid.com/catalog_100.html
electronics1.usbid.com/catalog_1000.html I've tried to reproduce errors yet I cannot. What am I missing please? Thanks kindly, Loren0