Character Limit Checker › Title tag length
Two things go wrong with a title in search, and only one of them is length. This page measures the pixel width that decides where the title link is trimmed, then runs your title against the rewrite cases Google publishes.
| Screen | Budget | Your width | Verdict | Characters that survive |
|---|
Widths are measured in your browser with canvas.measureText in 18px Arial, the size a
third party measurement found in use for the title line. Google publishes no pixel figure and the
published third party ones disagree, especially on mobile, so both budgets are editable fields
rather than constants.
A green row here is not a promise. Google rewrites title links whenever it judges another string more useful for the query, and the cases below are the ones it has written down, not the whole rule.
A title that does not look right in search has failed in one of two ways, and they have different fixes. Either the text is yours and stops early, which is a width problem, or the text is not yours at all, which is a rewrite. Length checkers usually only measure the first one, so a title that is comfortably under 60 characters and still shows up wrong looks like a mystery.
Google states that it truncates snippets to fit the device width, and the title line follows the same logic in a larger font. Sixty characters is the familiar rule of thumb because sixty average English characters are roughly 600 pixels of 18px Arial. Load it with capitals or with wide letters and the same sixty characters overflow; write it in narrow ones and seventy will fit. This page measures the string you actually wrote rather than counting it.
Google's title link documentation lists what it draws a title from: the title element,
the main visual title, headings such as h1, og:title, prominent styled
text, anchor text pointing at the page and WebSite structured data. It then lists the
cases where the title element loses to one of those: half-empty titles, obsolete
titles, inaccurate titles, micro-boilerplate repeated across similar pages, no clear main title, a
writing system or language that does not match the page, and duplication of the site name.
None of those cases is about length. A 45 character title made of three category names chained with pipes is short, well inside every budget, and a textbook micro-boilerplate case. That is why this page runs the checks above next to the ruler.
Two of the documented cases, an inaccurate title and a language mismatch, can only be tested against something else on the page. Pasting the H1 gives the checks a second string to compare with: how much of the title's vocabulary a reader actually sees on the page, and whether the two are written in the same script. Nothing is uploaded to do it, the comparison runs in the page like everything else here.
| Number | Value | Where it is published |
|---|---|---|
| What Google builds a title link fromThe title element, the main visual title, headings such as h1, og:title, prominent styled text, other page text, anchor text, links pointing at the page and WebSite structured data. | nine sources | Google Search Central, Title linksthe platform's own documentation states it |
| Cases where Google rewrites a titleHalf-empty, obsolete, inaccurate, micro-boilerplate, no clear main title, writing system or language mismatch, duplication of the site name. | seven documented | Google Search Central, Title linksthe platform's own documentation states it |
| Keyword stuffing and boilerplateTwo of Google's stated best practices for influencing the title link: avoid keyword stuffing, and avoid repeated or boilerplate text across title elements. | avoid both | Google Search Central, Title linksthe platform's own documentation states it |
| Snippet truncation follows device widthStated for snippets, and the reason a title is measured in pixels here rather than characters. | no length limit | Google Search Central, Snippetsthe platform's own documentation states it |
| Desktop title width"On desktop, Google shows 600 pixels of <title> tags." Google publishes no pixel figure of its own. | about 600 px | mrs.digital, Meta length checker notesa third party measured it, the platform publishes nothing |
| Title font size for measuring"Google now use 18px Arial for the title element." The same study measured desktop truncation lower than 600 px, which is part of why the budget field is editable. | 18px Arial | Screaming Frog, Page title and meta description lengths by pixel widtha third party measured it, the platform publishes nothing |
| Mobile title widthPublished figures for mobile disagree, from roughly 480 px to past 620 px, and none of them is Google's. The field above is editable for exactly this reason. | 620 px as a starting point | no published figure, see Google's title link docs insteadno source we could check publishes this number, so it is editable here |
There is no published character limit. Sixty is the usual advice because sixty average English characters come out near 600 pixels of 18px Arial, which is where desktop results have been measured to trim. Write in capitals or in wide letters and you overflow well before sixty; write in narrow ones and seventy survives. Measure the string, not the count, which is what the ruler on this page does.
Because trimming and rewriting are different mechanisms. Google builds the title link from the title element, the visible main title, headings, og:title, prominent text, anchor text and WebSite structured data, and it documents seven cases where your title element loses: half-empty, obsolete, inaccurate, micro-boilerplate, no clear main title, a writing system that does not match the page, and a duplicated site name. None of them is about length. The rewrite risk panel on this page runs those cases against your title.
It shares the measuring code and nothing else. The description page measures 13px Arial against a wide budget and explains Google's statement that descriptions have no length limit. This one measures 18px Arial against a narrower budget and spends most of the page on title rewriting, which does not apply to descriptions at all: Google documents the rewrite cases for titles on a separate page from the snippet documentation.