New Google SERPs page title lengths, 60 characters?
-
It seems that the new Google SERPs have a shorter page title character length?
From what I can gather they are 60 characters in length.
Does this mean we all need to now optimise our page titles to 60 characters?
Has anyone else noticed this and made any changes to page title lengths?
-
If you haven't yet, please see my follow-up post:
http://moz.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool
This is a moving target, and it's actually a pixel width (512px), but I tried to take a data-driven approach, and as best I can measure, 55 characters is a safe limit about 95% of the time.
I will add that Google definitely processes characters beyond that limit (some are even in the source code) and words beyond that limit could count toward ranking. They won't count much, I strongly suspect, but this new limit doesn't mean you automatically have to cut everything shorter. There's certainly no penalty for going over, as long as you're not keyword-stuffing to extremes.
One down side is that the new method (using CSS for the cut-off) means that Google now cuts mid-word, instead of between words. This could be more detrimental to CTR, in my opinion. It's very situational, though. The best I can say is to look at your most important title tags in the context of real searches and make your own judgment call.
-
Jon Wiley (Lead designer at Google Search) announced the changes are here to stay on a recent Google+ post - https://plus.google.com/+JonWiley/posts/AuUAQCWJpki
I will keep my ear to the ground and see what seems to be best practice with the page titles going forward
-
Google is always running tests in their SERPs. This is one of their tests and being to quick to follow might not be the appropriate step. I for one will wait for the dust to settle before tweaking anything.
Because the title lengths have changed there must be more happening within their search algo as well so just changing a title might not be helpfully.
-
The new Google SERPs have only been showing since yesterday where I am (Cheshire, UK) and no MOZ crawls seem to have been ran since then.
I got 60 characters from looking at current page titles I am using. Some that are over 60 run off the title of the search result and show as ...
Others that are 60 characters and below show fine.
In this MOZ article - http://moz.com/blog/googles-2014-redesign-before-and-after - it states "The new fonts do expand the titles significantly", could this be why I am seeing titles too long in the search results?
It seems to be across a number of sites on my result pages for various searches.
-
Using the Moz tools I check if page titles are too long, also my bespoke CMS checks the Page Title Length to 65.
Where does the 60 come from?
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 not showing the recent cache info: How to know the last cached version of a page?
Hi, We couldn't able to see the last Google cached version of our homepage after March 29th. Just wondering why this is happening with other websites too. When we make some changes to the website, we will wait to our website indexed and cached, so the changes will have some ranking impact. Now we couldn't able to check if the website got indexed with changes. Is there any other way to check the latest cached version or time of last index? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google Panda July 2016
Hi Does anyone know what impact the recent slow Panda roll out may have? Obviously content, but would it perhaps include engagement/user behaviour factors regarding your on page content too? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Google Maps marker inconsistency
We just discovered that depending on the address format you enter into Google, you may come across incorrectly placed marker locations on Google Maps. Is this because our Google Places address format is not consistent with Google Maps' format? If so, when I go into Google Places to update the address format, am I going to have to go through the citation process all over again?
Algorithm Updates | | SSFCU0 -
Google visits falling at the expense of Bing
Has anyone else noticed their percentage of search visits from Google slipping in the last few weeks at the expense of Bing? We've seen a 4% swing in the last month. Obviously Google is still the dominant presence (acconuting for 88.4% of all organic visits to our site kenwoodtravel.co.uk) but still it would be interesting to know if this is just a blip or more of a trend?
Algorithm Updates | | BrettCollins0 -
Input on Experiment with Google
As I'm doing more research into Google's devaluing links, I can do nothing more but to wonder if we will be penalized for previous links (bad links). Here is the situation: Our company was ranking very well for this particular keyword (within the top 3 positions on Google). However, in the last 6 months, we have seen rankings drop significantly (now to the point Google doesn't even recognize the existence of the page). With Google not recognizing us, we decided to do an experiment. The experiment: Make another page with a different URL and delete the existing page that is not ranking in Google. Our Experience: We have noticed that our pages will get indexed and ranked within weeks or making a new page. Our Goal: To get ranked on Google Will our new page get penalized from the old page if it's an entirely new URL? Will the fact that Google in devaluing our links effect our new page that we are trying to get ranked? Any insight would be of great value. Thanks in advance
Algorithm Updates | | WebRiverGroup0 -
Google doesnt index my Google+ Profile
Hey guys! I know it sounds like a novice question, but I have checked ALL THE BOXES THAT TELL GOOGLE TO INDEX MY GOOGLE+ PROFILE. It is Visible for search - 100%. It's been 3 weeks since I opened a Google+ profile and it still hasn't been indexed for its name. Any guesses what's going on? (It's not this name so don't try to google me)
Algorithm Updates | | Yoav_Vilner0 -
How Do I Make My Google SERP "SiteLinks" more relevant?
I have a shopping website with thousands of products, and the sitelinks that google has chosen for me (for a long time) are random product pages, which makes no sense to me. I do not emphasize those products on the home page, and I have a sitemap that clearly lists the directory of all the categories. I also added a "nofollow" attribute to almost every link on the home page that is not important. These products in the site links seem completely random and there isnt even a sitelink for "about" or any of the footer content! What gives? Also, my sitelinks never updated to the new, better version. Any suggestions?
Algorithm Updates | | cDNAInteractive0 -
Related Searches in Google
Hello, We're helping a client remove/minimize some negative information about their brand in Google's search results. Just curious about your take on if the related searches that appear at the bottom of Google search results can in any way be influenced or if it is more a combination of so many factors that any one person or organization wouldn't be able to change very easily? I've heard the related results could be influenced if enough queries generated overtake the "negative" queries done initially but I feel like that is venturing into black hat land a bit. thanks -Mike
Algorithm Updates | | mattmainpath0