Free Title Tag Checker

Title tag length checker: characters, pixels and where the cut falls.

The title tag is one line of HTML, and it is the line a searcher reads before deciding whether to visit. Here is what it does, how long it should be, why Google sometimes replaces it, and what changes when the page is selling a regulated service.

What a title tag is

A title tag is the <title> element inside a page's <head>. It never appears in the page body. Browsers put it on the tab and in bookmarks, and search engines use it as the first candidate for the blue headline of a result, which Google calls the title link. One page should carry one title, written for that page alone.

<head>
  <title>Break-Even Ratio: What It Tells You About a Rental | Your Firm</title>
  <meta name="description" content="...">
</head>
<body>
  <h1>How to read a property's break-even ratio</h1>

Three things are easy to confuse with it. The H1 is the visible headline at the top of the page, written for someone already reading. The og:title meta tag is the headline social platforms show when the link is shared. The meta description is the grey text under the title in a result. All four can say different things, and often should, but they should never contradict each other.

How long should a title tag be?

There is no official number. Google's documentation says title links are "truncated in Google Search results as needed, typically to fit the device width", and states no character limit for the element itself. The ranges on the pages that rank for this topic disagree: 50 to 60 characters, 20 to 70 characters, or about 580 to 600 pixels. Each is an observation of where results tend to cut, not a rule.

Verand's audit uses a range: a title under 30 characters is flagged as likely to under-describe the page, and a title over 60 is flagged as likely to be cut. The low end matters as much as the high end. A title like "Pricing | Your Firm" wastes the one line where a searcher decides whether this is the page they wanted. The high end is a soft limit: a title a few characters over often shows in full, and a title well under can still be cut if it is built from wide letters. That is why this checker reports the meta title length in characters and the estimated width in pixels side by side.

Characters versus pixels

Results are laid out in a proportional font, so a character count is only a proxy. In Arial, the face this preview uses, a capital W is 944 thousandths of the type size wide and a lowercase i is 222, more than four times narrower. At 20px that is roughly 19 px against 4 px. A title heavy in capitals, digits and wide words runs out of room long before one written in lowercase.

Two real runs from this page show the gap. Verand's own home page title is 66 characters and fails the 60-character check, yet its estimated width is about 591 px, inside a 600 px line. Willowdale Equity's break-even ratio article is 67 characters, one more, and its estimated width is about 643 px, well past it. Nearly the same character count, a different outcome in the preview. The character check is the stable rule Verand scores; the pixel figure tells you which side of the line a borderline title probably falls on. Treat the pixel figure as an estimate: Google can bold words that match the query, fonts render differently across systems, and Google has never published a pixel limit.

Why Google shows a different title

Google does not always use your title tag. Its documentation lists what it draws on to build a title link: the <title> element, the main visual title on the page, heading elements such as the H1, the og:title tag, other large and prominent text, anchor text on the page and in links pointing to it, and WebSite structured data. In August 2021 Google published an update to how it generates web page titles, and a title tag has been a strong suggestion rather than a guarantee ever since.

The same documentation names the patterns that invite a rewrite: a half-empty title with little more than the site name, an obsolete title that no longer matches the page (a year that has passed is the usual culprit), a title that is inaccurate about what the page covers, micro-boilerplate where many pages share nearly the same title, and the site name repeated inside the title. None of these is a length problem, and a checker that measures length, this one included, will pass most of them. The fix for each is the same: make the title describe this page, specifically, and keep it current.

When a CMS or JavaScript sets the title after load

Many sites never write their title in the HTML the server sends. A single-page app may ship a default title, the framework's name or a placeholder, and replace it with JavaScript once the page runs. A theme may print one title and an SEO plugin a second. Google says you can set or change the title with JavaScript, and Googlebot does render pages in a headless Chromium, but it queues pages for rendering, and "it can take longer" than a few seconds before that happens. Not every crawler that reads your page runs JavaScript at all, and link previews built from the served HTML will show whatever the server sent.

This checker reads the served HTML and does not run scripts, which is a limit and, for this question, the useful view. If the title on the card is not the title you see in the browser tab, your real title only exists after JavaScript runs. The durable fix is to have the server, or the static build, write the final title into the HTML so every reader gets the same line. If the card shows a title you do not recognise, look for a second <title> printed by a theme or plugin: the tool takes the first one in the document, which is the order a simple parser reads them in.

Brand suffixes, and firms with many locations

Most titles end with the firm's name after a pipe or a hyphen, and Google's guidance supports putting the site name at the beginning or end, separated by a delimiter. The trouble starts when the suffix is long. "| Willowdale Equity" is 19 characters of a 60-character budget; a two-partner law practice with "LLP" and a city can spend 30. Put the words that describe the page first, so that if the end is cut, the part that goes is the name the searcher can already see in the result's site line.

Firms with several offices meet a second problem: duplicate titles. A practice with six office pages that all read "Estate Planning Attorney | Smith Law" has six pages competing on one headline, and Google's micro-boilerplate warning describes exactly that. Put the location in the title ("Estate Planning Attorney in Oak Park") and make each page say something only that office can say. One-URL checkers cannot see this; it takes a comparison across pages, which is what Verand's full site audit does.

Titles for regulated firms

For a financial adviser, an attorney or a medical practice, the title tag is often the first piece of advertising a prospect reads, and it is written in the least reviewed part of the page. Words that are routine in marketing, "best", "top-rated", "guaranteed", "results", are the ones advertising rules for advisers, lawyers and healthcare providers often restrict. A title that says "Guaranteed Retirement Income Strategies" can make a promise that the careful body copy below it never makes.

Two habits keep titles safe to publish. Keep them factual: what the page covers and for whom, not how good the firm is. And remember that Google may replace the title with the H1 or other prominent text, so the H1 needs to be something your compliance reviewer would sign off on as a headline in search results too. Have your reviewer confirm title wording the way they confirm body copy. This page is not legal advice, and the checker does not judge wording; it measures the title and flags what is missing or out of range.

Common mistakes

• The site name alone. "Home | Your Firm" or just the firm name on the home page. Half-empty in Google's terms, and likely to be rewritten.
• The same title on every page. A template that prints the site name as the title everywhere. The checker sees one page at a time and cannot catch this; a site audit can.
• A year that has passed. "Best Strategies for 2024" still live in 2026. Obsolete titles are one of the triggers Google names.
• Keyword stuffing. "Tax Attorney, Tax Lawyer, IRS Attorney, Tax Help". It reads as spam to a person and gives Google a reason to write its own.
• Identical title and H1. Not an error, and Verand flags it only at low severity. Varying them lets the title be written for the result and the H1 for the reader.
• A title that only exists after JavaScript. The served HTML carries a placeholder. Crawlers that do not render, and link previews, see the placeholder.
• Entities that count oddly. "&" in the source is one visible character. Write the ampersand plainly where your CMS allows, or know that tools may count it differently.
• Claims in the title that the page cannot back. The title is advertising copy. Hold it to the same standard as the page it names.

What a good title looks like

Specific to one page, led by the words a searcher would use, between roughly 30 and 60 characters, with the brand at the end where a cut costs least. Factual rather than superlative, consistent with the H1 without copying it, and written into the HTML the server sends. Then check it again after a redesign or a plugin update, because titles are generated by templates and templates change.