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.
Page title getting cut off in SERPS even though it's under 70 characters?
-
I re-wrote the page title of a home page for a site I'm working on and made sure it's under 70 characters (68 to be exact) to comply with best practices and make sure it doesn't get cut-off in the SERPS. It's still getting cut-off though and right when it gets to the brand/website name. Does a "-" have anything to do with it? Does that translate to an elipsis?
Format:
keywords - website/brand.com
Can anybody tell me why this would be happening?
-
When did you make changes to the title tag? The new title tag will appear in the SERP only when the page is re-indexed by Google.
-
I am not able to confirm the issue you are describing. I have looked up multiple pages with titles of lengths between 65 - 70 characters and they appear completely in SERPs. I suspect the issue you are reporting is specific to a particular character in your URL. I understand you shared there are not any special characters, but there must be something unique about your URLs which cause this problem. Google fully supports longer titles then you are able to achieve.
Perhaps a compromise. Can you share the URL and search term used on one of these other pages which are being cut off under 60 characters?
-
A few questions:
Can you work the brand into the keywords somehow?
Is it necessary to show the brand at the end of the title for Google users?
Do you use the brand in the meta description?
-
As I shared above, it entirely depends on the title.
Without looking at the actual information involved it's kind of like describing a list of symptoms to a doctor. "I have a headache" could be nothing, could be a brain tumor. We need to see the "patient" i.e. the web page and keyword, in order to properly diagnose the issue. Otherwise we are guessing blindly.
-
Unfortunately I can't give that information. The only character I have in there is the "-" before the website name at the end. I typically use pipes "|" but the dash was already implemented across the site. Looking at some of my other clients now, it's starting to look like 70 characters is NOT the standard anymore. I'm seeing consistent page title cut-offs under 60. Ugh.
-
I just checked and that's not the case, I wish it was though. It gets cut-off at 54 characters! Isn't that way too short???
-
I'll fire you an email buddy.
-
What keywords are you searching with? If you add the brand to the keywords does it show the full Title? Google may be truncating the title depending on your query.
Cheers
Rob
-
I don't wish to side track this thread but I have worked with Zoo and to the best of my knowledge you can change the titles just fine.
Zoo > Blog > Items > Name is the article title
On the right side Config > Page Title is the field to control page title
If you have an example of what you feel can't be done, feel free to e-mail me: [email protected] and I can take a better look.
-
If you can offer an exact keyword search and URL, we can probably offer a conclusive diagnosis.
A possibility is one or more of the characters is being converted to a character which cannot be displayed properly. This type of conversion requires multiple characters to represent the single character (i.e. replacing with %E1 so it takes 3 character spaces rather then 1).
-
Hmm, not entirely sure, can you provide a link?
I have seen something a little odd recently with page titles. We are working on our new site, was going to use Joomla and the Zoo CCK but unbelievably, whilst they have a really cool blog system built into Zoo, you can't set page titles so all article titles are the same and it uses the blog title.
But, we are seeing google take the article titles from the H1 and create it's own title tags from these to return the page in the results with a good, clickable title.
Obviously, we are going to change this and go back to Wordpress as it's a dealbreaker not being able to set page titles but the behaviour we have seen from Google in this instance is interesting.
So, sorry, waffling, are your page titles exactly as you have put them? Is it trying to add anything? Do you have any special characters or anything that is causing problems?
I have just done a bit of a random google and I can see lots of page titles getting cut off at around 58 characters in where the page title is longer than that. Lots of other full titles seem to be coming in at around 62 so there must be a slightly earlier breaking point now. Doing a bit of googling it looks like you can get snipped at anything over 64 so I would just work on getting them a little shorter.
Hope that helps!
Marcus
-
Have you tried to exclude the "-" I have experienced brand being cut before but then I had the title under 70 characters + brand.
-
Have you tried to exclude the "-" I have experienced brand being cut before but then I had the title under 70 characters + brand.
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
-
How many hyphens are allowed in page titles or image names?
When I was going through certification, I was told it should be limited to one or two. I was curious if there is a change.
On-Page Optimization | | SeobyKP0 -
Snippet showing as domain name with apostrophe, instead of page title when searching for the domain name.
Hi, We have an issue with one of our websites, with the snippet dispaying differently in Google serps when searching for the domain or the website name rather than a search term. When searching for a search term, the page title shows as expected, but when searching for the site by the domain name either with or without the tld, it shows the snippet as the domain name with an apostrophe at the end. Domain is subli.co.uk Thanks in advance for any advice!
On-Page Optimization | | K3v1n0 -
Use of '&' in meta title
Hi, I know that use of '&' would be helpful to save space and also add more keyword variation to the title tag. But just want to make sure if it matters if I use '&' in most of my title tags? And also is it common to use more than & in one title? Would the following title be different in Google's perspective regardless of the title length? I am thinking they are all targeting the keywords 'fruit cake' and 'fruit bread', but the first one is the best. buy fruit cake & bread buy fruit cake & fruit bread buy fruit cake and fruit bread Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | russellbrown0 -
Home page or landing page?
Hello, I want to ask a question related to that - Should we put keywords in the home page title if we wish to position another landing page better for particular keywords? I have read in one website about SEO that it's good the main keywords of your website to be positioned in homepage title also. f.e. Let's say we have website about web-design and our company is named Company Ltd. The title of the home page is "Company Ltd. - Web design, SEO, etc" We have also another inner page named "Web design | Company Ltd.". So should we leave the first page name only "Company Ltd." and the landing page's name "Web design | Company Ltd." . I don't know if they both have the same keyword in their title they won't compete with each other.
On-Page Optimization | | HrishikeshKarov0 -
301 redirects from several sub-pages to one sub-page
Hi! I have 14 sub-pages i deleted earlier today. But ofcourse Google can still find them, and gives everyone that gives them a go a 404 error. I have come to the understading that this wil hurt the rest of my site, at least as long as Google have them indexed. These sub-pages lies in 3 different folders, and i want to redirect them to a sub-page in a folder number 4. I have already an htaccess file, but i just simply cant get it to work! It is the same file as i use for redirecting trafic from mydomain.no to www.mydomain.no, and i have tried every kind of variation i can think of with the sub-pages. Has anyone perhaps had the same problem before, or for any other reason has the solution, and can help me with how to compose the htaccess file? 🙂 You have to excuse me if i'm using the wrong terms, missing something i should have seen under water while wearing a blindfold, or i am misspelling anything. I am neither very experienced with anything surrounding seo or anything else that has with internet to do, nor am i from an englishspeaking country. Hope someone here can light up my path 🙂 Thats at least something you can say in norwegian...
On-Page Optimization | | MarieA1 -
Is there a SEO penalty for multi links on same page going to same destination page?
Hi, Just a quick note. I hope you are able to assist. To cut a long story short, on the page below http://www.bookbluemountains.com.au/ -> Features Specials & Packages (middle column) we have 3 links per special going to the same page.
On-Page Optimization | | daveupton
1. Header is linked
2. Click on image link - currently with a no follow
3. 'More info' under the description paragraph is linked too - currently with a no follow Two arguments are as follows:
1. The reason we do not follow all 3 links is to reduce too many links which may appear spammy to Google. 2. Counter argument:
The point above has some validity, However, using no follow is basically telling the search engines that the webmaster “does not trust or doesn’t take responsibility” for what is behind the link, something you don’t want to do within your own website. There is no penalty as such for having too many links, the search engines will generally not worry after a certain number.. nothing that would concern this business though. I would suggest changing the no follow links a.s.a.p. Could you please advise thoughts. Many thanks Dave Upton [long signature removed by staff]0 -
Is it ok to use encoded special characters in meta titles?
I've read blog posts stating that encoding special characters in title tags is both ok and not ok. Any definitive answer out there? Do the extra characters from adding encoding count towards the total number of characters that Google displays in SERPs? Or do they just count as one character?
On-Page Optimization | | BostonWright0 -
Creating New Pages Versus Improving Existing Pages
What are some things to consider or things to evaluate when deciding whether you should focus resources on creating new pages (to cover more related topics) versus improving existing pages (adding more useful information, etc.)?
On-Page Optimization | | SparkplugDigital0