Google generally displays roughly the first 50-60 characters of a title tag before truncating it, though the actual cutoff is based on pixel width rather than a strict character count, which is why some longer titles with narrow characters display fully while some shorter titles with wide characters get cut off. A strong title tag leads with the primary keyword or topic, is specific and genuinely descriptive of the page's content (rather than vague or clickbait-y in a way that mismatches the actual content), and is written to earn a click, not just to include a keyword — since click-through rate is directly influenced by how compelling the title reads next to competing results. Google sometimes rewrites a displayed title if it judges the original poorly matched to the query or the page content, which is a signal worth checking for via Search Console if a page's displayed title in search consistently differs from what's coded on the page.
Example
A glossary term page uses the title tag 'Backlink — Definition | SeoSorted Glossary' rather than a vague 'Glossary Term #47,' leading with the exact term someone would search while staying accurately descriptive.
Related terms
Related Reading
404 Error
A 404 error is the standard HTTP status code returned when a requested page doesn't exist on the server — the classic 'page not found' response.
A/B Testing (SEO)
A/B testing in SEO is the practice of showing two versions of a page element — usually a title tag, meta description, or on-page element — to see which one earns a better click-through rate or ranking outcome.
AI Citation
An AI citation happens when an AI assistant like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or Gemini references or links to a specific page as the source for part of its answer.
