Google has expanded title lenght to 600px

by seoquicktop Banned
11 replies
  • SEO
  • |
Many of you know that Google SERPs results look wider than usual, since the column width was changed from 512px to 600px. Title sites used to reflect about 60 characters (once it was up to 70, but then the font size was increased), now it's back to about 70 characters.

An average length of words in the English language is 5 characters, which means you can fit up to 14 words in a title. Why was the width of the title 512px? Perhaps of the first 9-inch Macs with a resolution of 512 Ã-- 342 pixels. The desktop screens are constantly expanding and the most popular resolution (according to different sources) is 1366 Ã-- 768 pixels. A minimum popular resolutions is 1024 Ã-- 768. In any case, major companies introduce an interface changes after thorough testing and, most likely, the testing results were great in terms of user experience.

What kind of recommendations can we make to webmasters following this change in Google? Assuming the search engine is your priority, we can recommend the following:

1. Compare your CTR snippets before and after May 4, 2016.

The Moz staff commented on Reddit that they didn't notice material changes in CTR. However, for some sites, the changes can be dramatic, either favorable or unfavorable, depending on the quality of titles.



Check CTR data for different pages of your site before and after that date. You can do that using Google Search Console under "Search Traffic" - "Analysis of the searches," under CTR you need to select the search filter type "Web Only" and choose the desired dates for comparison. You also need to review the change in CTR for different search results and for different pages, the average numbers tells you the numbers in general and not the impact to any particular search result or page - you might miss important data points.
In general, if the changes are favorable, then it's something you can be happy with! Otherwise, check the titles and make changes.

2. Review how the tiles that you promote are displayed in SERP.

Poor CTR is possible due to various reasons: Non-compliance of the landing page to the user's search intent. Sometimes that can be seen on the title.



For example, a user was looking for reviews of a particular location. In this case, CTR depends on the place of the name in the title - a user might be interested in Omega in Canada or the United States, there is a huge physical distance between the two. CTR is also highly dependent on the phrase "0 comments" - if the user notice it (and it is clearly visible that there are 0 reviews), then there will be no clicks on the first result. Said differently, it is often clear from the titles whether the intent of the search results is satisfied. These signs are often reflected in the ranking formula and the search engines try not to rank high the results that obviously cannot meet the user's search intent. The search engines correct poorly compiled headers, short or very long titles, providing the user with the important information. However, in some cases, the title remains as is. More often than not the webmaster and copywriter test different headers for context advertising guided by their intuition or by their selection criteria. People are different and intuition sometimes fails, for the best results the titles have to be tested by experienced professionals.

When reviewing the titles, at the very least, you have to consult with colleagues to see whether they consider them attractive and optimal for best CTR results.


Titles can be well made, but due to limitations of length or other reasons they will not appear as intended. In this case, you can easily figure out how your CTR changed post May 14th changes. The title may include unnecessary words or numbers. You can easily see that, you do not have to do a lot of manual work. If you are certain that the headers are well written, I recommend to exclude from the results of parsing of the titles those options that include the actual title of the page. That is, you check only the cropped versions or the versions modified by the search engines.

3. Check the display of the text snippets

You can also check the meta descriptions, especially if their size was 512px and they made ​​visually attractive by utf-characters. When you change the width the entire imaging could shift. In general, a change in the width to 600px is good, you can use extra words to describe the landing page.

What is your opinion? Share your observations on the subject. Personally, in my experience no one did anything after the change of the algorithm. That wasn't a good thing.
#600px #expanded #google #lenght #title
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Google has expanded title length to 600px

    The length of a page title wasn't ever important as far as counting characters. That's always been easy to prove by simply searching the omitted text in a long page title, the text after the SERP title ellipsis (...), Google will return the omitted text on a long page title.

    My point is Google still knows the entire page title text even If it's a mile long.

    SERP title CTR is a whole other game.
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    • Profile picture of the author Volodymyr Ulitovskyy
      Banned
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      The length of a page title wasn't ever important as far as counting characters. That's always been easy to prove by simply searching the omitted text in a long page title, the text after the SERP title ellipsis (...), Google will return the omitted text on a long page title.

      My point is Google still knows the entire page title text even If it's a mile long.

      SERP title CTR is a whole other game.
      great observation, I agree. Still, managing the title length of your pages is important for web user convenience. Every detail matters in today's ultra-high competitive world ;-)
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      • Profile picture of the author seoquicktop
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Volodymyr Ulitovskyy View Post

        great observation, I agree. Still, managing the title length of your pages is important for web user convenience. Every detail matters in today's ultra-high competitive world ;-)
        The most interesting, these nuances are paying attention only to large companies ... that is what Google is the most expensive company in the world that is constantly changing algorithms under certain changes of markets, greater use of steel plates, respectively, changed the length of a title ...
        for example a website is not a big company that wants to become a leader in the advertising photographers, trying to put all title - Photographers website

        head title: Destination photographer Maldives Italy France Paris Venice Cuba Thailand Mauritius Fiji Dominican republic Bahamas (115 characters)

        although they only photographers, write less, but to-date information, it is a short title of the page then all will be relevant, on other pages of other write-relevant keys in the title

        take ebay
        head title : Electronics, Cars, Fashion, Collectibles, Coupons and More | eBay (67 characters)
        67 characters, all right, even a 3 character left! ))

        take my loving warriorforum.com
        head title : Warrior Forum - The #1 Digital Marketing Forum & Marketplace (60 characters)
        Warriorforum could modify 10 more characters, in principle correct, but 10 characters - this is an average of 5 words or 2 keys lost
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        • Profile picture of the author mommywriter
          so does that mean that it is smarter to opt for the full character range or limit to a few lesser than allowed? would you please clarify?
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    • Profile picture of the author mommywriter
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      The length of a page title wasn't ever important as far as counting characters. That's always been easy to prove by simply searching the omitted text in a long page title, the text after the SERP title ellipsis (...), Google will return the omitted text on a long page title.

      My point is Google still knows the entire page title text even If it's a mile long.

      SERP title CTR is a whole other game.
      this is an interesting point and an observation. i would encourage the author to clarify
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  • Profile picture of the author vovanovich
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    • Profile picture of the author mommywriter
      any idea that what details are the most important to attend to?
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  • Profile picture of the author mommywriter
    Thanks dear for another informative piece on a tricky subject. your writing is always enjoyable and i follow your articles every time. good work and keep it up
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  • Profile picture of the author Annierai
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  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    Please keep in mind that the 600px title tag length is currently just something that Google is testing. They have made no announcement that it is going to be a permanent change. Also, realize that Google is not the only fish in the sea. Bing/Yahoo has theirs set right now at about 65 characters, maximum. If you have longer ones on Google, they may get truncated on Bing/Yahoo.

    I use the free MOZ Title Tag Tool. They have not updated it for the longer pixel length yet because they are waiting for Google to announce it as a permanent change.

    In the end, it is not the length that matters (as long as yours is not too long). Your focus should be to optimize it for both search engines AND people. If you wanted to rank well for "Wooden Dog Houses", for example, I would suggest putting that at the beginning of your title tag, followed by something to catch people's attention and get a click. Something like Wooden Dog Houses - Huge Selection - Discount Prices!
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    • Profile picture of the author azwealth
      Originally Posted by dave_hermansen View Post

      Please keep in mind that the 600px title tag length is currently just something that Google is testing. They have made no announcement that it is going to be a permanent change. Also, realize that Google is not the only fish in the sea. Bing/Yahoo has theirs set right now at about 65 characters, maximum. If you have longer ones on Google, they may get truncated on Bing/Yahoo.

      I use the free MOZ Title Tag Tool. They have not updated it for the longer pixel length yet because they are waiting for Google to announce it as a permanent change.

      In the end, it is not the length that matters (as long as yours is not too long). Your focus should be to optimize it for both search engines AND people. If you wanted to rank well for "Wooden Dog Houses", for example, I would suggest putting that at the beginning of your title tag, followed by something to catch people's attention and get a click. Something like Wooden Dog Houses - Huge Selection - Discount Prices!
      I agree google is not the only one but it's probably the best. I also use MOZ and it's been helpful.
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  • Profile picture of the author azwealth
    Thanks for this in depth analysis and recommendations which are true, especially the second one. One needs to review how it looks on SERP so you don't keep doing the wrong thing. Kudos.
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  • Profile picture of the author paulgl
    OP is rapidly becoming #1 SEO-Spammer.

    Should be: End of story. But, no.

    Just wait until you find some other old and "earth shattering" google change.

    Which should be any minute now.

    Originally Posted by seoquicktop View Post

    What is your opinion? Share your observations on the subject. Personally, in my experience no one did anything after the change of the algorithm. That wasn’t a good thing.
    How do know no one did anything? There's like 6 billion people in the world.

    Why would you even care if "no one" did anything? Perhaps people are not as clueless as you are.

    Perhaps it slipped by your last spam: Google can change the snippet however they want to.

    Originally Posted by seoquicktop View Post


    An average length of words in the English language is 5 characters, which means you can fit up to 14 words in a title.
    Complete BS. You would have to have 14 FIVE LETTER WORDS in the title. And that would be nonsense.

    But you exude nonsense. At least make these spam threads shorter.

    Paul
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    If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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