Page Titles Cut Shorter in the New Search Results

Titles that now stop halfway

Since last Thursday, Google's results on computers look different. The titles are larger and no longer underlined, and the ads above them carry a new label.

Search for your own service and your title may now end in three dots, sometimes before it names the service at all. A listing that looked complete last week reads like a fragment.

Nothing on your site changed. The space did, and titles written for the old results now lose their most important words.

Why fewer characters fit

The title in a search result has a fixed width. In a larger font each letter takes more of it, so fewer letters fit before Google cuts the title off.

Google cuts at the last whole word that fits and adds three dots. Whatever came after that point, often the specific service or the town, simply does not appear.

The limit is width, not a count of letters. Capitals and wide letters such as W and M use more room than i or l, so titles of equal length can be cut at different points.

Titles that lose the important words

The titles hurt most are the ones that save the useful words for last:

• Business name and slogan first, with the service at the end.
• "Home" or "Welcome to" at the start of the title.
• A list of services in a row, of which only the first survives.
• A string of towns before the service.
• The same title on every page, so every result looks like the home page.

Each of these worked well enough when more of the title showed. Now the visible part often says who you are and nothing about what the page offers.

What a searcher decides from the title

Someone searching for a service scans the titles to decide which result answers the question. The title is often the only part read before a click.

A visible title that names the service tells them this page is about it. One that shows only a business name and half a slogan asks them to guess, and the next result is a click away.

A title cut in the middle of a word list also looks unfinished, which is not the impression a careful business wants to make in its first sentence to a stranger.

Service first, with the business close behind

For a service page, put what the page is about first, then a short form of the business name, then the town if it matters. The service and the business both land before the cut.

The home page is different, since people often search for the business by name. There, the name can lead, followed by what the business does and where.

Drop the slogans and the lists. One service per page, described the way customers search for it, makes a title that fits and a page that matches it.

Finding the titles that need work

Search Google for your main services and your business name, and look at what shows. A search for site: followed by your domain lists your pages with their titles as Google now displays them.

Webmaster Tools helps too. Its HTML Improvements report lists titles that are long, short or duplicated, and the Search Queries report lists the searches each page appears for.

Start with the pages that appear most often in searches. A cut title on a page nobody finds matters far less than one on the page that brings in enquiries.

A worked example

A marine electronics installer in a Vancouver Island harbour town fits radar, chartplotters, autopilots and radios on pleasure boats and small commercial vessels.

Every page title began with the company's full name, followed by a line about marine electronics sales, service and installation, and only then the page's own subject.

After the redesign, a search for autopilot installation showed the company's result cut off after the slogan. Nothing visible said the page was about autopilots.

Each service page now starts with its service and the boats it suits, followed by a short form of the company name and the town. The home page leads with the name.

The long lists of services moved out of the titles and into the pages themselves, where each has room to be explained.

The words a boat owner searched for now appear in the visible part of the title, next to a name they can recognise at the dock.

When Google writes its own title

Sometimes Google replaces a title with one of its own. It tends to happen when a title is very long, stuffed with keywords or repeated on every page, and the substitute comes from the page's heading or other text.

A short, accurate title that agrees with the page's main heading gives Google no reason to substitute anything.

Changing titles without losing ground

Change the titles, not the page addresses. Rewriting a title is a small edit in most content management systems; renaming pages creates redirects and broken links for no benefit here.

Note the date of the changes. Google shows new titles after it next visits each page, which can take days for busy pages and longer for quiet ones.

If a page's description simply repeats its old title, rewrite that too, so the lines beneath the title add something new.

The counter-case

Plenty of titles already fit. A business with a short name, and pages titled plainly by service, may lose nothing at all in the new design.

Pages that rarely appear in searches, such as a privacy page or a staff login, can wait. So can a site about to be rebuilt within weeks, if the new titles are written properly.

But every page a customer might find through search deserves a title that shows the service and the business before the cut. That check takes an afternoon.

Rewriting the titles that matter

1. Search for your main services and look at your titles.
2. List the pages that appear most often.
3. Put the service first on each service page.
4. Keep the business name short and close behind.
5. Drop slogans and lists of services.
6. Give every page its own title.
7. Check the results again after Google visits.

Step three is the change searchers notice. A searcher who sees the service named in the first few words knows the page answers the question, whatever happens to the rest of the title.

To judge rewritten titles in the Search Queries report, read the average position beside impressions and clicks, as the average position figure in Webmaster Tools explains.

Frequently asked questions

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