The SEO industry and SEO websites have long recommended your title tag length be approximately 50 to 70 characters long. But during a Google Off the Record podcast, Google’s Gary Illyes says there’s no limit on a title tag length and those numbers are “externally made-up metrics.”
The 50 to 70 character limit is something the SEO community created as a standard because it’s the length of text that a search engine results pages (SERPs) on Google will display. Also, the character limits are based on how the titles appear on desktop and mobile devices. By keeping the title within that range, it prevents the full title tag from being cut off.
But, Illyes says a title’s tag length doesn’t have anything to do with indexing purposes. And when asked if there is value in having longer title tags than what can be displayed, Illyes’ response was “Yes”.
“The reason why I try to steer people away from thinking about concrete numbers is it’s not even about how we display titles, but rather, how we construct our serving index and how we tokenize the page itself,” said Illyes. As with anything, he says there is a limit, but it isn’t a small number.
Illyes’ advice to people is to “try to keep [the title tag] precise to the page.”
“I would not think too much about how long it is and whether it’s long enough or way too long,” he said. “If it fills up your screen, then probably it’s too long, but if it just one sentence that fits on one line or two lines, you’re not going to get a manual action for it.”
While, according to Illyes, Google has no title tag length, Google does have some guidelines to help you create good titles. According to the company’s tag developer support page, titles should be descriptive and give users a “quick insight into the content of a result and why it’s relevant to their query.”
If you’re worried about creating the “right” title for your page, you can visit Google’s tag developer support page for more information. And, remember, there is no need to worry about the title tag length.
Veronica Garcia has a Bachelor of Journalism and Bachelor of Science in Radio/TV/Film from The University of Texas at Austin. When she’s not writing, she’s in the kitchen trying to attempt every Nailed It! dessert, or on the hunt trying to find the latest Funko Pop! to add to her collection.
