The standard advice is "keep title tags under 60 characters". That's a reasonable rule of thumb, but it's an approximation of the real constraint — and knowing the actual mechanic explains a lot of confusing behaviour.
The real limit is pixels
Google truncates titles by pixel width, not character count — roughly 580px on desktop. A title of 60 narrow characters ("illustrative title with thin letters") fits comfortably. Sixty wide ones ("MAXIMUM WORKWEAR WAREHOUSE") won't.
Capitals, and letters like W and M, are wide. Lowercase i, l and t are narrow. This is why two titles of identical length can behave differently in the results page.
Practical translation: aim for 15–60 characters, and front-load anything that matters. If it's cut, the tail is what disappears.
Why too short is also a problem
A title of "Services" or "Home" is technically fine and strategically wasteful. The title tag is your strongest on-page relevance signal and the blue clickable line in results. Six characters squanders both.
If a title is under about 15 characters, you almost certainly have room for a qualifier that adds real search relevance: location, specialism, or outcome.
The formula that works
For commercial pages:
Primary Keyword | Qualifier | BrandFor example: Emergency Plumber Bristol | 24/7 Callout | Aqua Fix — keyword first, differentiator second, brand last where truncation is harmless.
For informational content, lead with the exact question or phrase people search, because matching their query is what earns the click.
Why Google rewrote your title
Google replaces titles in a meaningful share of results. It does this when your title looks unhelpful for the query, most commonly because it is:
- Keyword-stuffed — "Plumber Bristol, Bristol Plumber, Plumbers in Bristol"
- Duplicated across dozens of pages
- Far too long, so Google picks a clearer H1 instead
- Boilerplate, like a brand name on every single page
You can't force Google to use your title, but accurate, specific, appropriately-lengthed titles get kept far more often. If yours is being rewritten, treat it as feedback rather than a bug.
Common mistakes worth checking today
- Duplicate titles sitewide. Every page competing with the same title dilutes all of them.
- Missing titles entirely. Google falls back to whatever text it can find — rarely flattering.
- Brand-first on every page. "Aqua Fix | Emergency Plumber" buries the keyword behind a brand nobody is searching for yet.
- Title identical to H1 on every page. Not fatal, but a missed opportunity — the title targets search, the H1 targets the reader.
Check yours in seconds
Our meta tag checker reports your exact title length and flags anything outside the safe range, alongside your meta description and canonical. Fix titles first — no other single tag returns as much for as little work.